brick, endurance, relief

I see a pair of trousers described as brick - a sort of grown-up pink. Brick is a colour that I like by association. Old claret tends to be brick red, though if it is too much on the brown side, it will probably be oxidised. Then there are penny red postage stamps, so much more attractive than the more valuable penny blacks. Then I like old brick walls set off by green moss; and the mellow red of cliffs on the Devonshire coast, in particular the cliffs that mark the bay and shingle beach at Sidmouth, where I spent part of my childhood.

Plants that stick around for a long time, I muse after the rain this morning, deserve special affection. The bay tree in front of our house came here with me in a small pot twenty years ago. And the fuchsia, which used to die down every winter, and is now more than 10ft tall and hard to restrain, arrived here at the same time.

A youngish man, quite fit looking, approaches a bench in the Grove and slumps into it with one of those sounds, half way between a sigh and groan, which you generally associate with men of an older vintage.