Old gentleman, getting there, modest cook

There is an old gentleman, whom I often pass in the street. He is well dressed in an old fashioned way, has a big white moustache and a sad, self-absorbed look. He is always on this own. I often want to greet him, but his reserved manner somehow prevents me from doing so. I passed him yesterday in the Grove and did so again to day at almost exactly the same spot and probably at the same time. I thought: if he so much as glances at me, I will say "good afternoon", but he ploughed on, and so, I regretfully admit, did I.

In a queue I see a familiar face, but one which looks tired and thinner than it used to be. I ask after his family and his health for want of anything else to ask after. "Getting there, he says, "getting there," but I have a feeling that he isn't really.

In a pretty book of recipes from Provence, the author writes with reference to the famous soup of the region, Soupe au Pistou: "In giving this recipe I tremble a little. Every housewife speaks of it with a fierce pride. Hers is the true version, the best." Such is the passion that cooking arouses, at least in France.

Weather forecast, pomegranites, strangeness

I like hearing the BBC weather forecast because it is nice to be reminded that there are going to be scattered showers in the west, even if there always are and always have been.

Pomegranites seeds clothed in transparent garnet coloured flesh are among the most beautiful things; they taste good and are good for you.

"There is no excellent beauty without some strangeness in the proportion", wrote Francis Bacon. It is quite often quoted and with good reason.

Compost, leaf sounds, beams in the sky

There is satisfaction in settling down a vegetable bed for the winter. I spread a good layer of compost over the barely weeded earth. I look at it, and think about what I'll sow there in the spring, and in what order.

I stop in the middle of the Grove and listen to the sound of the remaining leaves in the numerous trees. I ask myself whether the dry leaves of autumn have a completely different sound to the fresh leaves of early summer. I expect they do, but how can you compare them?

In the late afternoon sky is a strange phenomenon. You often see the sunbeams emerging from behind clouds, but to day it is rather the beam-shaped shadow of sunbeams, which I see. They are darker than the surrounding sky but quite straight and, through transparent (you can see clouds behind them), look heavy and solid like roof beams.

Blackbird, unseasonality, not so fast

I feel a presence as I walk past the hedge which borders our garden. It is a blackbird. I expect it to fly away. Bit it sits there and looks at me with its beady, orange eye.

The warm weather goes on and on. Today, I was still cutting sunflowers. And nasturtiums!

In the Grove two little boys run their scooters through a puddle. They leave a tracery of tyre tracks on the dry tarmac. A mother says: "Not so fast!"

Walking in the rain, umbrella, Chilean wine

My favourite film (sometimes) is Singing in the Rain, and my favourite scene is that in which Gene Kelly does that dance in the rain. Today I walk to Safeways in the rain and don't mind getting wet, thinking of the film and Gener Kelly's abandonment to utter happiness.

On the slope beside the station a man in a red anorak struggles with a golf umbrella, which has blown inside out. The umbrella looks like a giant flower or a very large and flashy satelite dish. The man seems to be performing a dance with the umbrella, which his wife, also wearing a red anorak, and his two children join, as a sort of corps de ballet.

There is a new wine shop called Five Reasons Wine in Vale Road opposite the station entrance. It is not for the impecunious, bargain hunter. A table is laid out with tasting glasses in front of the door. I buy a bottle of Chilean wine, which the label tells me comes from Panquebue in the Aconagua Valley. It is a place which not only is, but sounds, a long way from Tunbridge Wells.

Umami, second childhood, Penguin Books

For some time, I was trying to remember the word, which describes the fifth primary flavour.The other four are: saltiness, sweetness, bitterness and sourness. Then I came across a note I had made and mislaid, which reminded me that the word is umami. It is a Japanese word and was coined by a Japanese researcher called Kikunae Ikeda in 1907. He was trying to find what it was that made the Japanese stock made from seaweed and dried tuna so alluring. He identified two chemicals - glutamic acid and inosinic acid, which were largely responsible for the flavour. It is a taste common to asparagus, tomatoes, cheese and meat. In its artifical form it is known through the salt made as a seasoning - monosodium glutimate. This has earned itself a bad reputation as an ingredient of Chinese take away food and other fast foods, and is reputed to make you thirsty, to create artificial hunger pangs and have other bad effects. Be that as it may, glutamic acid, in its natural form, is a significant ingredient of breast milk.

While waiting for my lift home after the checkout at Sainsbury's this morning, I try to pass the time by searching for beautiful or interesting things. But the cross-looking shoppers offer very little in that direction. Then I notice that one trolley, proudly pushed by a parent, is equipped with a carrier suitable for a very small baby. In it, lies, amidst the cereals, bottles, detergents and tins, a regal looking child, pink and pristine. As I am approaching my own second childhood, I nearly give way to, but fortunately resist, the impulse to ask in which aisle babies can be found.

I have loved Penguin books all my life. I still do. Just recently, I have come upon those mini-penguins called Penguin 60s, containing extracts or short stories from well known authors, in an Oxfam bookshop. I snaffle them up, because, at 49p each they are far nicer and better value than cards to send to friends, and fit neatly into a standard envelope. I find a new hoard in the Chapel Place Oxfam.

Fly agaric, painted lady, fireworks

It seems to be a good year for fly agaric, the fungus beloved of fairy story illustrators, and often referred to as a toadstool. I see this conspicuous mushroom in the Grove and in the triangular shrubbery, nearby, known as the Village Green. It has a bright, scarlet cap on which there are white spots or "warts". It kills or stupifies flies when broken up and left in a saucer of milk. It is an halucigen and an intoxicant. A graphic description of its effects on the nervous system in Roger Phillips' Mushrooms and Fungi of Great Britain, does not encourage experimentation.

Near the group of fly agaric, I see a painted lady butterfly. Or did I? Its movements seem slow and ponderous. This, I attribute to the cool wind and the time of year rather than the mushroom.

Tomorrow is November 5. As it is a Saturday, we are spared the sporadic, unseasonal bursts of festive explosions on dates more convenient for working parents and school children, and fireworks day will be celebrated on the appropriate day.

Swish, doing without, wind

The swish of car tyres on a wet road is for some reason a comforting sound.

Among the many things, listed in direct mail catalogues, which it is pleasure to do without, is a clock guaranteed to be accurate to less than one millionth of a second.

Today the wind, which has been frisky all night, works itself into a fury tearing the last leaves from the trees in the Grove, and whips the branches about as though they, too, are about to be wrenched away.

Topinambour, juice, mire

I often wake up with a word in my head.This morning, for no good reason, it is topinambour, the french for jerusalem artichoke, and a pretty word too.

Juice extracted from: carrots, celery, tomato, red pepper and radish, lightly seasoned.

A wet day, with the leaves squashed into the paths and gutters, slippery like mud. It puts me in mind of Milton:
"...Now that the fields are dank, and by the fire
Help waste a sullen day, what may be won
From the hard season gaining? ..."

Cat, Larkins bitter, warm sun

The little marmalade cat, which takes over the vegetable garden, has always ignored me. Today he greets me instantly, purring and winding round my leg. Why the change of attitude? Perhaps it's because we haven't seen one another for some time.

A pint of Larkin's bitter and then another pint of Larkin's bitter.

In the coolish wind, the wamth of the sun, like a friendly hand on your shoulder.

Coincidence, raindrops, fungus

The sheep, which I saw from the train the other day, with the sun glinting on the edge of their fleece, brought to mind the paintings of Samuel Palmer. Today, I read in the paper a review of an exhibition at the British Museum entitled: Samuel Palmer: Vision and Landscape. Of the three reproductions accompanying the article, three have sheep in them - all with that mystical silver glow.

I go through the garden in the rain to cut a lettuce for lunch. The rain is soft and persistent but composed of the finest drops; a small moth flits past me unconcerned. There is a symphony of dripping sounds in my ears to accompany the autumn smell of damp and decay.

Among the shrubs in a bed in the Grove is a mass of what look like discarded sponges. They turn out to be fungi. At home, I identify the variety as Sparassis crispa. They appear to be growing out of the "forest bark" mulch which has been spread there keep weeds at bay.

Docks, slang, kindness

The rusty colour of the seed heads of docks in abandoned fields.

According to an article in the Independent on Sunday, the English language is changing at a terrifying pace, as new slang words are introduced. Here's an example: "Don't go bitchcakes! Chillax, yatty. I'm sittin' on chrome. Let's go and have a Britney. Wix!" This is translated as: "Desist from your aggressive behaviour. Relax, beloved girlfriend. I've got an impressive car with nice alloy wheels. We could go mad and get a beer. Wouldn't that be great!"

"Three things are important in life. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind." Henry James.

Kindness, primrose, llamas

A mother with a small child, a push chair and a little boy with a big bicycle and a crash- helmet mount the stairs of the station bridge. The young man, who works at the flower stall at the foot of the stairs, sees the boy struggling and takes the bicycle from him and carries it up the stairs. You should expect to see, but cannot always depend on seeing " such little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love".

There's a primrose in the flower bed by the front door. A little worrying on the penultimate day of October, but who could look at a primrose and wish it were not there?

Two llamas, a long way from the Andes, occupy a field, which you can see from the train as it leaves Sevenoaks

Pigeons, old man's beard, Big Ben

Yesterday was the warmest October day on record. I watched pigeons sitting on the ducting under the road bridge which crosses the railway at the station. They were cooing and murmuring as though the sun had set off hidden mechanism in their throats. Clearly they were behaving as though it were spring. They seemed to be performing the regular mating rituals, in which the the birds appear to kiss, the male using his beak to push food into the female's beak.

The sun shone on old man's beard, wild clematis, which clambered over shrubs and low trees by the railway line. It looked like off-white snow.

The chimes of Big Ben are one of the most reassuring sounds. This weekend, I read that the clock will be stopped for 32 hours for servicing, The bell, after which the clock is named, first tolled in 1858. Virginia Woolf describedthe sound of the chimes as "leaden circles disolving in the air".

Before getting up, beautiful soaps, sheep

The time between waking and getting out of bed, when you hear early morning noises outside the window and, half asleep, let your mind wander.

It is a pleasure to follow the observations of Clare Grant, who invented the idea of noting three beautiful things every day, and the feel-good librarian, who, like me could not resist taking up the idea. Going to their weblogs everyday is like following soap operas as you learn a little bit more about their lives, but with none of the melodrama.

The way the sun, low in the sky, touches sheep, which I see from the train to Hastings, with a makes them glow with a silvery light. It reminds me of the work of the mystical painter, Samuel Palmer, who lived in Shoreham, Kent, and was a friend of William Blake.

Lillies, green bear, mars

Two bunches of white lillies, which Heidi brought home, are closed at the moment like the beaks of birds; we can watch them open, as though to sing.

There is a small, green teddy bear in a shop window in Grove Hill Road. It is made by the German company Steiff, and is one of a limited edition of 3000 for sale worldwide. It is a replica of a bear made in 1908, which, as teddy bears are named after Theodore Rooosevelt, US president from 1901 -1909, must have been one of the first of the breed.

Anyone wanting to visit the planet mars should take the opportunity this weekend as it will be no more than 41.3 million miles away from earth.

Mustard, blue sky, oloroso

Every year, the broad leafed oriental mustard of which I planted some seeds eight or nine years ago, seeds itself and grows all over the vegetable garden. It has a sharp, spicey taste which goes well with the sweetness of all the-year-round lettuce.

Blue sky with soft white clouds after grey.

The sight, but not yet the taste of dry oloroso sherry, at the new wine merchant in Vale Road. Sometimes oloroso is sweetened. But in its natural state, it is dry and nutty on the palate. It is generally difficult to find.

Precision, flattened leaves, "horrible day"

I read, in one of Mallarme's most famous poems:
La sens trop precis rature
Ta vague litterature.

(I can't find accents, I'm afraid).

It translates approximately: "A meaning too precise destroys the mystery of what you write". This makes sense to me where poetry is concerned, but not prose. I will take pleasure in thinking about it.

The leaves "yellow and black and pale and hectic red" are not driven by the wild west wind today "as though from an enchanter fleeing", but are instead flattened on the wet pavement in patterns such as you might find in a textile factory.

A man passes me in the park with the words "horrible day". I say "yes", without thinking in the warm, wet and blustery wind. Then I think, "no, not all: there are far, far worse days."

Carrot and apple juice, a train in time, kedgeree

Following too much alcohol the night before and too much coffee the morning after, there is a special sort of thirst to be satisfied. A juice bar called Fushi provides the answer. It consists of a juice made from apples and carrots, nothing else, powerfully crushed and filtered and served with a straw in a tall glass.

Arriving at the station with a couple of minutes to spare for a train you think you are going to miss.

Kedgeree. This is made with: boiled, long grain rice; flaked, smoked haddock, which has been poached in milk or a mixture of milk and water; hard boiled eggs ( the white seperated from the yolk and chopped, so that the yolk can be crumbled over the dish to make an orange coloured garnish); and lots of finely chopped parsley. Butter is melted in the hot rice to give added flavour and a little of the liquor from the poached fish is added to prevent the dish from becoming too dry.

Rainbow, chocolate beans, pigeon-shower

From the train to London, we see a rainbow on our right. It seems to move along with us. At one point, it ends over the Canary Wharf tower and the grey jumble of the eastend of London behind. On the left of the train, the sky is a golden sea bordered by a purple land and archipeligo of cloud.

The Chocolate Society is a small shop in Elizabeth Street, near Victoria Station, which serves coffee and, as as the name suggests, specialises in chocolates of the most spectacular quality. On the counter, to remind you of where chocolate comes from, is a chocolate pod on permanent display. It is about the size and shape of a papaya fruit, but very different in colour and texture. In cross section, you see the chocolate beans, a little larger than coffee beans, which are peeled of their white casing and roasted until dark brown.

By the Kings Road, Chelsea, there is a relatively new development (shops and restaurants) where The Duke of York barracks used to be. In two places, there are small fountains spurting straight out of the paving stones. Two pigeons, their feathers awry, are enjoying a shower, in the warm Autumn sun.

Sunflowers, dormice, rain

Sunflowers have featured a lot this summer because they (the smaller, multi-bloomed varieties) have been so succesful and varied. As the weather has gradually become colder, the flowers have become smaller and slightly less persistent. But it was satisfying to day to cut several stems of what can only be described as mini-sunflowers, small but perfectly formed versions of those which I have been cutting for the last three months.

A special dormice officer is being appointed by Bath and North East Somerset Council at a salary of £10,000 a year. Duties, I read in The Week, will include identifying "dormouse heritage", holding "dormouse-related activities", and promoting "intellectual access" to dormice.

Lying in bed as it is getting light and listening to the steady, rain falling vertically outside the open window.

Floodlight, clematis, almost wild

Mount Sion this morning: the blinding sun, low in the sky, shining directly down the road as I walked up was reflected off the wet tarmac so that all you could see was light.

Clematis montana rubens, that pretty, pink-flowered plant, which usually climbs along fences and up walls and trees to greet the summer, is not usually in evidence towards the end of October. Today, the plant seemed to be growing particularly vigorously, its tendrils hard at work, on the railings by the station platform; and there were several flowers to greet the coming winter.

Squirrels round here are not quite wild animals, nor yet domestic, because they own to no human being. Although they scramble up trees if you get too close, they do not seem unduly scared of us. Only fairly recently have I connected the noise they make, something like the quacking of very old or sick ducks, with these animals. It seems an appropriate noise for something, half wild and half tame.

Cobweb, leaf sounds, sun

The cobweb by the gate of the house opposite is festooned with rain drops.

The leaves of the oak at the corner of the Grove have been the first to turn brown and gold and to begin to fall. In the breeze this afternoon, it is noticable what a different noise, compared to spring and summer, the leaves on the tree make when they are dry - a crunchy, scuffling, similar, but not as pronounced as the noise they make as they blow along the ground.

At this time of year, with the afternoon sun low in the sky, shadows are longer, and trees, buildings, people are lit as though by a spot light, an effect heightened by piles of purple clouds opposite the sun.

Time, cat, leaf blower

The End of Time, which I am reading at the moment, pursues the theory, that time does not exist. The author, a physicist called Julian Barbour suggests that there is instead of time, an infinite series of "nows"- instances which exist for ever in an unchanging state. It's a lot to take in but pleasurably thought-provoking.

"The hardest thing to find is a black cat in a dark room; especially when there is no cat". Confucius.

There is a man in the Grove with a machine which blows leaves into piles. Small children jump and roll in the leaves, and throw them up in the air.

Last of the warmth, something new, open spaces

Every year, at this time, we say: this will be the last day when when it will be warm enough to sit outside at lunchtime; we say it day after day, as we have today and did yesterday, and the day before.

A leaf hanging by a long thread of cobweb from a hazel tree.

After the storm of 1978, they took a long time clearing the Common of fallen trees. The trees were not always there, as the Common used to be grazed by sheep well into the twentieth century, but by the time of the storm, because it was no longer grazed, it had become thickly wooded. Only the cricket field and some rough ground round the rocks, which form the high point of the Common, could be described as open ground. Now it is noticable how, in the process of restoring the area, some new open spaces have appeared.

Crab apples, madeleine cakes, theatrical leaves

There is a wild crab apple tree on the road to High Rocks, near Tunbridge Wells. A few years ago we picked the sour, unpreposseing fruit mostly off the ground, and made with it some sublime jelly.With the intention of repeating the process I go to find the tree, but there is no sign of apples on it or around it. A the back of my mind I recall another such tree on a nearby wooded slope. There, spread on the leafy woodland floor, are enough apples for my purpose. Crab apple are far too sour and astingent to eat raw, but combined with sugar and thanks to their natural pectin, make one of the best jellies. Traditionally they were used for cooking. In Loves Labours Lost Shakespeare' s song about winter goes...
" ...birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marion's nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl."

In the French market in the Pantiles, there are madeleine cakes. The memory of these little sponge biscuits dipped in lime flower tisane, inspired Marcel Proust to begin A La Recherche du temps Perdu.

Leaves floating down from the trees, lit by Autumn sunshine and wafted only by the gentlest breeze, are like leaves dropped on to a stage set.

Dried cherries, willow herb, Cabbage Stalk Lane

Dried cherries retain the shape of the fruit and concentrate its flavour; they are much to be prefered to crystalised cherries, with their surplus sugar and garish appearance. We find the dried variety among a vast display of dried fruit and nuts at the French market in the Pantiles.

On the Common are stately spikes of rosebay willow herb, now adorned with wooly seeds, They like hang around like fashion models waiting their turn on the catwalk.

From the delightfully named Cabbage Stalk Lane, which leads from the Common to High Rocks Lane, I hear the almost forgotten sound of a steam train on the restored single track line from Tunbridge Wells to High Rocks.

Fox again, quinces again, acorn again

Every day, for the last few days, when I push open the door to the vegetable garden, I look straight away towards the compost bins, and there, regularly, is the fox I mentioned a few days ago. His reaction is now almost the same every time. He jumps off the heap in a slightly guilty manner, but never seems unduly hurried. He trots towards the far corner of the garden, and before he reaches the fence, he stops, turns, and with one foot raised, stares at me. Today I try to speak in body language to him: instead of staring back, I look away and walk in the opposite direction to the one he is taking. He stays longer, but decides in the end to move on.

Yesterday's mush of cooked quinces has dripped through the jelly bag and left a delicate amber liquor ino the bowl beneath. Boiling this up with preserving sugar and decanting the hot jelly into jars is a pleasure; even greater is the pleasure of contemplating the set jelly in the jars neatly labeled, with the scent of quince still in the air.

During the summer, I picked up one of the previous autumn's acorn cups. Today I found one of this autmn's in its full splendour. The cup belongs to a variety, which spreads outwards and curls round so that it resembles a head of stylised hair. Placed on the white page of my notebook it casts a shaddow even more interesting than iteself.

Barbour, rainwater, quinces

My Barbour, which has now reached a respectable, battered state, is a comfort in the rain, and holds in its capacious inside pocket, articles which need to be kept dry.

The sound of rain water running and gurgling as it enters a drain.

The smell of quinces cooking down to a mush in prparation for jelly-making.

Numbers, rain, starlings

With the The Independent newspaper two days ago came "a map of the 21st century world". I have just had a chance to open it. Among other "facts" provided is the population of the world: 6,446,131,400 (July 2005 estimate). Chinese Mandarin is listed as the most widely spoken language (13.69%), with Spanish next (5.05%) and English third, accounting for 4.84% of the world's population.

I walk back from the supermarket in the rain by a the slightly longer but more attractive route through the Grove. The smell of the rain is good, laden with the oils and resins released by earth and leaf.

In the Grove are trees laden with starlings like twittering fruit.

Sunflowers, bureaucrats beware, musketeers

The sunflowers, which I mentioned during the summer, are still flowering at this late date. They are not the giant sunflowers, which rise majestically like sky-scrapers and bear one heavy flower each, but multi-stalked plants which go on flowering the more you cut them. The stems are as long as they used to be earlier in the season, but the flowers have become smaller and are all the more attractive for arranging. There are two varieties - one with yellow flowers and one with dark red flowers. They go well together.

An elderly lady with grey hair, a fresh complexion and a smiling face goes into the pub and emerges with a glass of cider. She sits in the sun reading a book, her walking stick beside her. I catch sight of the title of the book: Bureaucrats How to Annoy them.

My grandson, Rowan, wants soldiers for his birthday. In the shop in the High Street, I find musketeers. As I find it hard to put down The Three Musketeers, which I am reading at the moment. I indulge myself and him.

Roses, fox, pigeons

Perhaps because this Autumn has been unusually still there have been, though less prolific than in June, some near perfect roses: not a petal out of place, not a flaw in the colour.

Earlier this year I surprised a fox on the compost heap. He was back again to day. He thought he should leave, but stopped for a minute to look at me, before deciding that I was worth neither further investigation, nor headlong flight; and ambled off as though there were better places to spend his time.

Pigeons, particularly the variety that inhabit towns, are not popular creatures. But I thought today as I sat in the Pantiles how much I liked watching them, even though they can be faintly ridiculous. They strut past you like soldier but appear to waddle when approaching head on. When they walk, their heads move up and down and from side to side as they look for things to eat. Their best feature is the colour of ther necks: green, grey, turquoise, blue - the sort of tints you sometimes see when oil and water run together in a puddle in the street.

Whistle, tidying for Winter, basil

The sound of a steam train's whistle. The train runs on a single track from Tunbridge Wells to Groombridge on bank holidays and at weekends. You can hear its distant sound from our garden - like a little shriek of surprise from a nervous woman.

There is a satisfaction here, quite different from the preparations of spring gardening, in tidying and settling down flower beds and pots for the winter. The same goes for the vegetable garden across the road, where compost is to be spread over the beds, some of which have yet to be cleared.

The smell of freshly cut basil. I have been hanging on before harvesting my small, scattered crop, so that I can make pesto. With the nights getting colder, I could wait no longer.

Horse chestnut, apple varieties, beanpoles

This morning as I passed a horse chestnut tree a conker fell to the ground. It was not in its usual green case, and because so fresh, it shone like newly polished furniture. As well as the fine grain of the shell, I could see a reflection of myself in its sheen.

At the farmers market this morning there were no fewer than 25 different varieties of local apples on the same stall. They looked, smelt and tasted as apples should, unregimented, unpolished and ungraded. Here are some of the more unusual names: American Mother, Cornish Gillyflower, Margil, Pitmaston Pineapple.

The beanpoles, which I errected in May are now ready for dismantling. I unwind the vines, which have clung to the poles with such life-giving energy through the summer. A satisfactory way of doing this is to uproot each plant with its pole, and swing the heavy root round so that it unwinds the spirals of the vine, as it were by gravity. I tie the poles into a bundle, ready for next year.

Leaf skeleton 2, roasted figs, nasturtiums again

Yesterday I mentioned the leaf skeleton, which I found on the compost heap. First I photographed it; but a better solution was to scan it. Here is the result.

Giuseppi has been serving a simple dish of figs, with their four segments opened out like a flower and stuffed with dolcelatte cheese. Two good slices of Parma ham are wrapped round these parcels, which are roasted for about seven minutes. The figs are dressed with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and served with a garnish of frizzy lettuce and cherry tomatoes.

It was back in June that the nasturtiums self-sown from last year's self-sown crop were beginning to flower. I had contained them in a narrow strip of the bed against the fence. But this year, as last year, they have taken over the whole bed, clambering over dhalias and roses riding over the path. The flowers grow on surprisingly long stems and are good for cutting. They range in colour from yellow, through orange to a dark crimson.

Leaf skeleton, vegetable soup, hedgeful of sparrows

While turning the compost I find an almost perfect leaf skeleton, a leaf sculpted of copper coloured lace. It is something to marvel at.

A hedgeful of sparrows on the way down the hill, ( a title for a book?) You can hear but can't see the sparrows.

An autumn soup. From the garden, ruby chard, tiny cherry tomatoes, the last of the courgettes, finger sized. From the fridge: some home-made chicken stock. The stock is brought to the boil and simmered. Added to the broth in this order are: The chard stems, finely sliced and the leaves shredded; the courgettes cut into thin disks; the tomatoes cut in half. In about five minutes the soup is ready. The chard has tinted the stock a delicate pink.

Scene in the Grove, beautiful things, robin and centipede

In the Grove, in a space of a few square meters and during a few seconds: two pigeons and two magpies, peck away among the blades of grass; a squirrel sits up to rotate and nibble a nut between its paws with the evening sun highlighting its white belly; a dragon fly (this is October!) flits past.

I read the weblog Simple Things, the work of feelgoodlibrarian. typepad.com. Like me, she has been inspired by Clare Grant's Three Beautiful Things web log. It is interesting to note how different people interpret Clare's idea, reflecting their different personalities and visions of the world. But what a great idea Clare's original idea is! A simple formula for looking at and noting the world in a positive and detailed way - more than an art form, almost a way of life.

Yesterday's robin returns. He sits on the edge of the compost bin or on a nearby branch and chirrups. His beak doesn't open but his throat ripples, while the sound continues. Then I notice that the chirrupping has stopped. He has landed inches away from my fork and is nibbling at a centepede, which in a moment he swallows. With this robin I have fallen completely in love.

Naked light bulb, robin, writing

In a first floor room opposite the side of our house, there are internal shutters that close three quarters of the way up the window in place of curtains. In the morning, I see a naked light bulb, which reminds me of the one in Guernrnica, though there are no other similarities with the picture. On two succesive mornings now a face has appeared above the shutters to look out on the world on which I too am looking.

On the compost a heap, a robin sits and watches me digging out compost. It chirps putting its head on one side to see better how many creatures I am exposing for it to eat. As soon a I move away it descendson its prey.

My favourite Moleskin notebooks now arrive each with a free post card. The card consists of nine stickers on which are quotations from well known writers, printed alternately black on white and white on black. One by Italo Calvino in particular appeals: "Writing always means hiding something in such a way that it then is discovered."

Swollen beans, Autumn or Fall?, Italian coffee

At this time of year I look forward to picking French beans, which have developed beans inside the pods. They are like the beans, haricots for example, which you buy dried and have to soak for a few hours before cooking, but because they are fresh, you can remove them from the withering pod and cook them right away. They only need sauteeing for a couple of minutes in olive oil with a sliver of garlic or chopped shallot, to be ready to eat, soft and full of flavour.

We were away for only eight days. When we left it was still summer. Now there is no question that Autumn has arrived. Autumn or Fall? I prefer the American term, which is briefer and more evocative. Dry brown leaves are already beginning to drift on to paths, unmistakable signs of Autumm, but the yellow leaves of silver birch, scattered on the grass, from a distance resemble small crocuses or the petals of other spring flowers.

Outside Caffe Nero on the corner of Calverley Precinct, three Italians are talking voluably. One wears a black Caffe Nero t-shirt. Are they there to add authenticity to this Italian style coffee house chain? I doubt it. But this is Tunbridge Wells.

Swash buckling, sweet chestnuts, universal cures

There's nothing like a swash buckling novel to settle you down after a holiday. And what novel is more of swash buckler than The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas? I've just started it and it is all that I had hoped for. But having used the word, what precisely and literally is a swash buckler? I have just looked it up and can tell you that it is someone who strikes a buckler, a small shield, with his sword in a boastful or agressive way, which is just what D'Artagnan is up to in the beginning of the Three Musketeers.

Horse chestnut trees are everywhere in the Grove and children are busy stamping on the spikey, green shells so that they can get at the nuts to play conkers with. But I prefer the appearance of the sweet chestnut, to say nothing of the fact that you can eat the nuts. There is a sweet chestnut tree in a house on the corner of the Grove. But the nuts, so far, are too small to roast.

There is something disarming about universal cures, even though you may be pretty certain that the claims made for them are exagerated. Cider vinegar is one such panacea which, in my youth, I was persuaded to drink, diluted in a glass of water and sweetened with honey. I see it is still around and note that, among other things, it: strengthens the immune system; helps control and normalise weight; aids digestion; helps relieve aches and pains, soreness and stiffness; eases the pain of dry and sore throats; combats fatigue; reduces irritability; and promotes longevity.
The book on cider vinegar, which someone gave me years ago, was written by a farmer who claimed that he fed it to his cows, whose milk-yield was consequently greatly increased.

Reminder, lettuce, the sound of rice krispies

Downloading and editing the photographs taken during the Fiesta de Santa Tecla in Sitges a week ago has been a special pleasure. This is probably the best of a number of lucky snaps and brings back the memory of the sight, and the sulphurous smell which hung over the town.

A welcoming row of All the Year Round lettuces ready for cutting.

Rice Krispies were around when I was a child; my own children listened to them in the cereal bowl; and so, I suspect, have theirs. Snap, Crackle, Pop is the sound the cereal is supposed to make, when milk is added. But I read to day in The Week that in other countries it makes quite different noises. In Germany it is: "Pif! Paf! Pouf! In France, Cric! Crac! Croc! And in Holland, Krisper! Knasper! Knusper! This piece of information comes from a book called The Meaning of Tingo by Adam Jacot de Boinoid. It is published by Penguin.

English, unexpected grass, too bad

Hearing the rythms and intonations of English in the street after more than a week of Spanish and Catalan. There is a place for both but it is nice to come back to the familiar.

From the bridge that crosses the railway line at the station, I see grass growing in the gutter of the roof over platform 1. It is proper grass rather than a mixture of weeds. You don't often have the chance to look down on gutters.

I enjoy this tidy dismissal by Ambrose Bierce, the American writer and wit, in a book review in the San Francisco Chronicle. "The covers of this book," he wrote, "are too far apart."

Beach walkers, babel, home

A typical sight on the beach at Sitges as we bid it au revoir this morning. A couple in swimsuits walk briskly up and down beside the sea. The beach is about 300 m wide and this seems to be a more popular form of exercise than swimming.

Behind us on the terrace where we have breakfast is a group of five business people. In the space of half an hour the same groups speaks Italian, Spanish German and English.

Returning home to familiar things, and, in particular, my own keyboard with which normal English punctuation is achievable

George Orewell, swallows, computer

In Barcelona, we are sitting outside a bar, in the area between the Cathedral and the port, which used to be disreputable, but which is now more respectable though still poor. We are drinking beer and have ordered a sandwich. There is a tall tennament in front of us, with washing hanging on every balcony. Suddenly we notice that the square is called Plaza George Orewell, and even one of the sandwich variations bears the name of the English writer. We recall Homage to Catalonia in which Orewell described his experiences, while supporting the Republican cause in the Civil War.

While swimming before breakfast this morning, we are joined by scores of swallows, which swoop and flutter and skim over the water.

One of the many pleasures of this holiday has been the computer for guests of the hotel to use at the reception desk. Although its version of Microsoft seems to make it difficult to punctuate in some instances, it has been wonderful to be able to complete this log for the last week.

Santa Maria del Mar, Fiduea, long way home

Inside the wonderful fourteenth century church of Santa Maria del Mar in Barcelona, which is also called the people's church, there is a sad notice in English, which reads Keep a close eye on your belongings. Beware of flower sellers.

Fiduea is a Catalan dish which consists of very fine noodles which are cooked in a black sauce of octapus ink,with octapus in small slices, and prawns. It is prepared in a wide, shallow pan called a paellera, also used for paella, from which it is ceremoniously served. It is a treat, which we always look forward to.

In a bar I overhear a woman on a mobile phone. She says I want to go to Australia via China.

Massage, monster, storm

This is a friendly, intimate beach, a family beach. It is above all relaxed. A number of women, regardless of age or shape, go topless. Two girls, so attired, or unattired, were lying slowly cooking by the sea, turning from time to time to assure an even tan. We went for a swim. When we returned, they were attended by two uniformed masseuses, in striped shirts and shorts. These girls had produced bottles of unguents and creams, brushes and sponges from their bags, and were applying them vigorously. They pinched and pummelled, squeezed and stroked, and bent arms and legs up and down, taking, as it were, a body each. It was like the end of a production line for dolls.

There are two showers on the beach, one at each end. They are constructed of stainless steel and pressing a button releases solar heated fresh water. Coming out of the sea I find that a scuba diver, dressed from head to toe in black, has taken possession of the one I was making for. He has a black mask from which protrudes an elaborate breathing apparatus like a huge proboscis.

A majestic thunderstorm last night. We are dining with friends. Rolls of thunder and lightening recall the phrase shock and awe. The rain seems to fall in a solid sheet. The lights go out. Our friends light candles and we talk through the din. Later we are driven back to the hotel via streets sloping towards the sea, whic have become rivers and waterfalls. The water races through the culverts under the sea wall and carves channels on the beach. The next morning, everywhere the sand is pock marked by the rain.

Basset hound, pub Voramar, people watching

People who live here walk their dogs every morning. One of the dogs is called Otto. He is an enormous basset hound . It takes five minutes for him to walk past you. He is low slung, a few inches above the ground, with a vast head, powerful shoulders, and an aristocratic indifference to anyone who stops to talk to him. He looks straight ahead as though there is something more worthwhile in the future; and there probably is.

The Pub Voramar is not a pub: it is a traditional bar. All the menus are in Catalan. We watch the proprietor every morning putting out the tables and chairs. Always with great pride, he hangs up the pub sign - a painting of the outside of the bar, which is framed in a crude contraption made of old boards, perhaps salvaged from an old fishing boat.

People watching is part of every holiday. We watch a group of three Swedish couples. They are dead serious. Not a smile, not a laugh; they spend more than half an hour reading menus. Eventually they sit down at a table outside the restaurant, where we are eating. They order food and drink. The women have wine, the men beer. But when the beer arrives, the glasses are too small. The beer glasses are replaced by half litre tankards. Still there has been not sign of animation. The men take a couple of sips. Suddenly the table lights up. The long faces break into smiles; they begin to talk. They are having a good time; they are on holiday. The whole process has taken the best part of an hour.

Drums, small waves, date palms

The Fiesta de Santa Tecla is defined by drums, in addition to fire crackers. During the festivities, you hear them all day and most of the evening, and everyone, young or old, seems to be carrying them. The rhythm is insistent, rather like African drums in old fashioned movies. I see one drum strapped to the side of a motor scooter like a saddle bag.

The sea is calm and the small waves creep up the beach like lacy claws.

From a date palm, tresses of dates hang like locks of dark golden hair streaked with green.

Singing newsagent, fireworks, morning swim

Returning to the same place every year has many charms. One is meeting old acquaintances. The lady at the newsagent is an example. She sings in between selling papers and magazines. I don't know if she has a sad or happy life, but she has given the impression over the years of being the happiest person in the world.

It is the Fiesta of Santa Tecla and there is an amazing fireworks display from the plaza in front of the church.It begins at 11 pm. We watch it from the balustrade at the far end of the little bay called Playa San Sebastien. There are huge bursts of stars in the shape of flowers, hearts, palm trees, vast towers of sparks which flower and hang a long time in the sky before fading. The sky lights up behind the church on the promentary at the heart of the town and silouttes its baroque architecture. In the morning the ground is littered with spent fireworks cases like half smoked cigars.

The first swim in the morning, before breakfast. We have the beach to ourselves. But we must share the sea, for the sun joins us, throwing a golden path from the east.

One palm tree, two bikes, dialogue

The lasting image of this small seaside town is the promentary where stand the church, the municipal buildings and a few of the houses of which the town originally consisted. From the beaches on either side, you can always see, standing up above the rooftops, just one palm tree.

On the small balcony of one of those tall, narrow, town houses, which you see in Mediterranean towns, there are two bicycles placed so that the two front wheels stick out above the railings on either side like ears.

It's hard to tell the nationalty of neighbours sitting at cafe tables. I overheard the following dialogue:

"You American?"
"English. You American?"
"English. We're from Manchester".

Mild jubilation.

Pyranees, cranes, stork

Flying over the foothills of the Pyranees and seeing green valleys borderd by dark woodland or shrubland. At the edge of the valleys, white villages and winding through the woods paths leading to the next valley and so on to the wide horizon.

Cranes gathered round the edge of Barcelona airport where they are building a new runway.

The Spanish for crane is grua, which as in English also refers to a bird. Amazingly as we taxied towards the airport buildings I saw a white bird with a long neck over the runway. Was it a stork, or a swan, or perhaps a crane

Conkers, holiday, watching animals

Prickly green shells breaking open, to reveal the first conkers, "fresh-fire coal chestnut falls".

Anticipating a forthcoming holiday.

Watching squirrels, or almost any other animal. One of the attractions seems to be that we see human postures in, for example, the way a squirrel sits up to eat, holding a nut in its paws and nibbling it. Or is it that we see, reflected in an animal's behaviour, the animal buried within us?

Seed catalogues, moved on, dandelions again

Next year's seed catalogues have arrived in the post. If winter comes, can spring be far behind?

Walking through a town where I used to live and where I am glad I don't live anymore.

Dandelions always give pleasure. Today, I saw two dandelion clocks close together and a dandelion flower between them; and the shadow of one of the clocks on a white wall beyond: a picture to remember.

Football-playing dog, bics, a mistaken marriage

Sometimes we hear a sporardic rumbling noise from next door. It is Leo, the staffordhire bull terrier, who has invented a solo game of football, which he plays in the cellar he has to himself. He rolls his ball against the wall, stops it and knocks it back, again and again.

We tend to take ball point pens for granted. But they were invented only 75 or so years ago by a Hungarian called Biro. The rights to the name were acquired by the French company Bic. Last week, apparently, Bic sold its 100 billionth biro. The company says it is has sold the equivalent of 57 pens every second since its launch in 1950.

Rossini, appart from being a composer, was a noted gourmet. Escoffier named Tournedos Rossini after him - fillet steak surmounted by foie gras and a generous slice of truffle. I read, today, that the composer made the mistake of marrying his cook for fear that she would leave him. She didn't leave, but never cooked for him again.

Semicolons, Sammy Keen, pushchairs

I admit to a fondness for semicolons; they allow depth and delicacy in a sentence. My old friend David, who lives in Amsterdam, raised the topic the other day. I recommended Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynn Truss, which, like everyone else I know who has read it, he seemed to enjoy. Today, I found in the Financial Times magazine an entire article devoted to this item of of punctuation. It seems that Americans in general have a horror of it. One American writer, Donald Barthelme, goes so far as to say: "Let me be plain: the semi colon is ugly, ugly as a tick on a dog's belly, I pinch them out of my prose." As the article, by Trevor Butterworth, makes clear, we would have been robbed of some marvellous English writing by authors as different as Thomas Carlyle and Evelyn Waugh, to mention but two, if there were no semicolons. Butterworth quotes Fowler in support of semicolons: "A style that groups several complete sentences together by the use of semicolons, because they are closely connected by thought, is far more restful and easy for - the reader that is - than the style that leaves him to do the grouping for himself; and yet it is free of the formality of the period ..."

The inscription on a bench I sat on in Mount Pleasant reads: "In memory of Sammy Keen, a very special dog, affectionate and clever."

In the shoe shop, Russell and Bromley, there is a push chair park at the bottom of the stairs leading to the childrens's department. When I passed it, three identical push chairs were parked there.

Clever schoolgirl, Yorkshire terrier, shopping

Cleverness is not always appreciated in England, hence expressions like "smarty pants" and "too clever by half". But you have to hand it to the schoolgirl Tilly Smith, who spotted the sea behaving oddly, bubbling and beginning to recede, while on the beach at Phuket in Thailand; and, remembering a school lesson about tsunamis, persuaded her parents and other people near them, to leave. She got an award, a few days ago, from the Marine Society for saving a number of lives when the Asian Tsunami struck.

On a crowded pavement, a Yorkshire terrier runs ahead of its owners, then stops and runs back, then comes up behind them again, weaving in out of the other pedestrians.

At a table on the pavement outside Costa, I hear a young woman at a neighbouring table say: "I'm dreadful; I'll see something, and I'll buy it. Then I'll see something else..."

Quiche, magpies, bathroom taps

A quiche Lorraine is the archetypal quiche. Elizabeth David's recipe in French Provincial Cooking,, which I have always used, is as good as it gets. You need half a pint of double cream and six eggs (five yolks, one whole egg)for the filling. That, with thin slices of streaky bacon, is all that goes into the pastry case. The pastry, too, is basic short crust - - 2 oz butter, 4 oz flour and one egg. The quiche may sound rich, but it's as light as a summer breeze. We ate it with a green salad.

I saw three magpies on a roof top this afternoon. Curious, clumsy birds about which folklore abounds:

"One's for sorrow, two's mirth,
Three's a wedding, four's birth,
Five's a christening, six a dearth,
Seven's heaven, eight is hell,
And nine's the devil his ane sel".

In the bathroom shop in the London road is a shelf built like a wall. The narrow ledge on top displays all sorts of taps. They sit there looking like patients in a doctor's waiting room.

Acorn, dandelion clocks, figs

I picked up new acorn, brought it home and photographed it, mysterious and majestic in its simplicity. Most of the egg-shaped surface is a rich, fresh green, but towards the cup, creamy streaks appear, growing paler and becoming almost white under the cup. The cup, in which the nut sits, has spreading scales, which curl outwards like tonsured hair. I have made a postcard of it and called it "early autumn", early because it is too green to represent the season in its maturity.

A dandelion clock is a wonderful thing on its own, but a scattering of them in longish grass makes you think of chinese lanterns, for in certain lights they seem to glimmer; while in other lights, and from a distance, they look like white flowers rather than seed heads.

Figs! Big, fat figs: bluey purple skins, a thin white undergarment of pith and then the flesh, crimson with tiny yellow seeds. We peel them, cut them into segments and eat them with Parma ham, or better, with the more fully flavoured, Spanish, serrano ham.

Rooftop spectators, New Orleans, flying car

When I woke this morning I had a picture in my head of the extra-mural cricket spectators at the Oval yesterday; they sat astride rooftops, and crowded together at open windows. They were drawn, I was going to say, by one of the most civilised and civilising of sports. But the sentiment was spoilt for me by the answer to a question in the quiz in the Independent newspaper today. Who said: "Cricket civilizes and creates good gentlemen. I want everyone to play cricket in Zimbabwe; I want ours to be a nation of gentlemen.?" Robert Mugabe.

"We saw New Orleans in the night ahead of us with joy. Dean rubbed his hands over the wheel. 'Now we're going to get our kicks.!' At dusk we were coming into the humming streets of New Orleans. 'Oh, smell the people!' yelled Dean with his face out of the window, sniffing. 'Ah! God! Life!.'" From On the Road by Jack Kerouac, published in 1957.

The hedge, which separates our little garden from the road, is about 8ft high. There is not a lot of traffic and the last thing you expect to pass is a car-transporter. So for a moment, as we sipped our lunch-time drinks, we were under the impression that a car had taken off and was skimming along at hedgetop level.

Monkshood, sheep, Petersen

Today, unlike in past years, Monkshood, also known as Wolf's-bane, is in full flower in the garden. Its beautiful, dark blue blooms, which hang from a central stem, are hood-shaped and mysterious. They are slightly sinister in the manner of all hooded things. And with good reason: they are poisonous. The botanical name aconitum comes from the Greek for dart, because the juice of the plant was used to poison arrow heads. It strikes me as a suitable plant for the garden of a beautiful witch.

The decorous way sheep arrange themselves in a field.

Watching Kevin Petersen, with a mixture of painstaking defensive play and some seemingly effortless hooks and drives, score 158 at the Oval cricket ground, to help secure the return of the Ashes trophy to England.

Martins, framed, the middle of the highway

Over the High Street, house martins wheel against the evening sky. It is hard to see one of the features - the white rump - which distinguish these birds from swallows, but you can identify them by their tails, where the fork is less pronounced than with swallows. The swifts, with their longer wings, which, a few weeks ago, in the same place, were swooping and screaming, have departed for warmer lands. I love the noise, which swifts make and their daredevil, agile flight.

In the upper room of a house, a couple are painting the inside of the window frame which frames them.

I'm still reading Jack Kerouac's great outburst of care-free, extravagant joy On the Road, which did so much to define post-World War 2 America.
Here's a typical image, as they drive through the night: " The white line in the middle of the highway hugged our left front tire as if glued to our groove. Dean huddled his muscular, t-shirted neck in the winter night, and blasted the car along".You get the feeling, as you do with so many American novels, of the vastness of the country and the hard-to-control energy, which fills it.

Cyberman, morning glory, scoreboard

In Mount Pleasant, a cyberman from Dr Who in his silver space-suit intoduces himself to a very small child, whom he shakes by the hand. The child is not in the least bit scared despite the nasty looking gun, which the cyberman holds in his other hand. BBC South East is having an open day. The child seems too small to know about promotions, but cybermen are clearly not strangers to him.

There have for several years now been morning glories growing in pots in the front garden of a house in Mountfield Road. This year there is but one pot, but the glories are glorious indeed, almost the size of saucers; and that blue, which reminds you of Mediterranean skies!

The traditional scoreboard at the Oval cricket ground. The television camera now regularly focuses on it to tell us the score and a lot more about the progress of the game. It is easy and pleasing to read and allows you to grasp the whole picture in a second, a brilliant piece of design.

Parsley and nasturtiums, the age of Aquarius, grey haired speedster

Picking a huge bunch of flat-leafed parsley, then of nasturtiums and not being able to get the green and pleasantly bitter smell of the one and the warm, spicey smell of the other out of my head.

I read this in a book review. It's from the musical Hair:
"When the Moon is in the Seventh House,
And Jupiter aligns with Mars,
Then Peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars".
Now wouldn't that be nice.

There is a steep slope coming down from the railway bridge beside the station, and leading to the station yard, where you cross the road to Safeways. I see, on the sloping pavement, a grey haired woman, one hand on the steering wheel of an electric invalid buggy, hurtling down at full speed. She turns left, negotiates the pavement ramp without stopping, mounts the ramp on the other side of the yard, and turns left following the slope into Vale Road. Not once does she stop or slow down. In her free hand is a cigarette, which she puffs with an aplomb to match her driving skill.

Cricket poem, cricket watcher, seasonal quote

On the Radio Four Today Programme, Sir John Major, the former prime minister, reads his poem Cricket Prayer:
Oh, Lord, if I must die today
Please make it after close of play.
For this I know, if nothing more,
I will not go without the score.

An alert cameraman at the Oval, on the first day of the fourth Test against Australia, catches a young spectator perched on a chimney stack at the edge of the ground.

Seasonal quote from John Donne, Elegy lX,
No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in an autumn face.

Musical vegetables, photographer, web

Caught part of the Radio Four programme, You and Yours, on which was featured a group of environmentalists from Austria. They had carved musical intruments from vegetables, such as carrots and celeriac. In particular, one mentioned a dried pumpkin, which, he said, sounded like a didgeridoo.

A tourist photographs the chalybeate spring in the Pantiles. He walks away and examines so posessively the image on the screen of his digital camera that you wonder whether the spring is still there in its entirety.

In the garden, this afternoon, a spider has spun a web, which seems to be perfectly symetrical. The wind blowing, through it, makes it billow like a sail despite the spaces between the threads. Right in the middle, sits the spider and waits, as spiders do.

Motto, mood music, roast tomatoes

The motto of Tunbridge Wells, the town where I live, is "Do well, Doubt Not". I'm not sure what it means and a google search hasn't enlightened me, although there are plenty of references to Tunbridge Wells and to mottos. It used to worry me that I didn't know. Now I simply ask: does it matter? I doubt not that it doesn't.

Tomatoes slow roasted and marinated in spices and herbs.

Indeterminate music drifting out of The Grove Tavern on a warm, humid afternoon could be the sound track of one of those French movies where very little happens, very slowly.

Snail, squidgets, redesigned shop

For the last week a snail has taken up residence on the sweetpeas. It used to reside on the cross bar of the bamboo frame. Now it has migrated several centimeters to a vertical pole.

Two very small schoolgirls with enormous rucksacks almost as big as themselves overtake me in the Grove. "Why do you call them squidgets?" says one. "I don't know, " says the other, "my Dad always calls squirrels squidgets."

The nearest branch of the health food store Holland and Barrett closed down for a week and has now reopened. It has a completely new layout. Everything, even the products look different, though they are almost certainly the same.

Fountain, goldfish, grand-daughter

Watching a powerful fountain sending up its single jet into the bright blue sky so that the droplets vanish into the light.

A goldfish in the big pond in the garden at Penshurst nibbles an apple that some one has thrown in.

Talking to grand-daughter Gigi who says she wants to be a photo-journalist and travel round the world.

Spitfire, beachcombing, rhyming slang

A roar overhead and very low over Tunbridge Wells, flies a spitfire - the fighter plane which helped to win the Battle of Britain in 1940.

Beachcombing is the best of pastimes. One trophy from yesterday is a slim piece of wood perhaps 4 inches long, smoothed by the sea, with its grain visible along its length and an indentation like a valley. One part is thicker than the other forming a curved hood like a bird's head or the cockpit of an aeroplane. The thinner projecting part could be a long, straight beak. The more I look at it, the more possibilites I see in it. It will prove a good companion.

In the Mind charity shop today I find an excellent dictionary of rhyming slang. If I had had it earlier this week I might not have been puzzled by the advertisment outside the Compasses for a Ruby evening. I might have learnt from it that ruby, short for Ruby Murry, means curry.

Bopeep, brambles, shingle

Outside West St Leonards station there is a signal box with a sign, which reads Bopeep Junction.

A recorded announcement on the train that the refreshment trolley is on the way strikes me as containing a particularly well rounded and mellifluous sentence: "Please ensure that the aisles are left clear of bags and luggage to allow the service to progress smoothly through the train."

I lie in the sun on the shingle beach, and the small, warm pebbles mould themselves comfortably round my body.

Booking tickets, couillonade, family trees

Booking tickets for a holiday on the internet.

A useful french word is couillonade, which can be translated as bullshit.

I wake up thinking about family trees. Why is it that they are usually in the shape of a triangle with one or two ancestors, back in time, at the apex, and their progeny seeming to poliferate beneath them? When you think about it, it should be the other way round, with just one person at the base, and a growing heap of people above broadening out into hundreds of thousands of ancestors. Do the sums: 2 grandparents, 4 great gandparents, 8 great, great grandparents, 16 great, great, great, grandparents, and so on. Given that it takes two to create a baby, you will find that, if you go back 20 generations, you will have 1,048,576 ancestors.

Morning mist, groups of people, new view of familiar place

Early morning mist after a warm night promises a hot day.

Seeing a familar place from a different view point. The Hotel du Vin has a tiny vineyard planted on the slope beneath the sheltered terrace. From the entrance to the vineyard, you have a view of Calverly Park below it, framed by leaves, where everything is small and particular.

In parks and public place, when the weather is warm, people arrange themselves on the grass in groups. As they, converse, inspired by a summer's day, they make fascinating compositions of arms, legs and heads, that, from a distance, seem interchangeable.

Swinging bee, dandelions, rabbit joins bear

This morning, an early bee was performing its flower-to-flower routine with the lavender. When it landed on a bloom at the end of a long, unobstructed stem, it made the stem swing up and down like one end of a seesaw.

I like everything about dandelions: the English name from the French, dents de lion, because of the shape of the leaves; the French name pissenlit because the leaves when eaten (and they are eaten as salad)are a diuretic; the bold, uncompromising flower; and the intricacy of the seedhead, the dandelion clock, with every, parachute-like seed anchored to the ovary, which, when the seeds have gone, resembles a pincushion

In an upper window of the house called "Windy Bottom" on the corner of the Grove and Sutherland Road, there has, for a long time, been a man-sized teddy bear peering down at passers-by. Now in the window below, his watch has been joined by a large rabbit with floppy ears.

Old maths, cold beer, Orlando Furioso

This question from an arithmetic book of 1536 is quoted in the Indpendent. "There is a catte at the fote of a tre the length of 300 fote/ this catte goeth upwarde eche day 17 fote, and descendeth eche nyght 12 fote. I demaunde in how longe tyme shall she be at ye toppe. The book is called An introduction for to lerne to rekyn with the pen, & with the counters .

I look up the opening paragraphs of Ariosto's 15th Century poem,Orlando Furioso. The prose tanslation in the Oxford University Press edition reads: "I sing of knights and ladies, of love and arms, of courtly chivalry, of courageous deeds ... I shall tell of Orlando ... setting down what has never been recounted in prose or rhyme ... of Orlando, driven mad by love - and he a man who had always been esteemed for his prudence.

A cold beer in warm sunshine.

Old friends, viola, the unexpected

Talking about old friends with an old friend,

On the front steps, in the angle between one step and the next, a dark blue viola appeared today. It must have been self-sown from a pot which was there last summer.

Heraclitus is supposed to have said: "If you do not expect the unexpected you will never find it."

Who was it? chickens, sedentariness

It worries me that the friendly man who greeted me when we were sitting outide The Compasses seemed to know me well, while I couldn't place him at all. Did he mistake me for somebody else? Or am I losing my memory for faces? His pleasant smile comes back to me, but no name and no recollection of a previous encounter.

A big, plump chicken at today's Farmers Market. It was fed on cereals and vegetable products and spent its life in the open air. It will be roasted for our Sunday lunch.

A few quiet days have made me reflect, with the great William Cobbet, that: "It is a great error to suppose that people are rendered stupid by always remaining in the same place".

Lavender, candytuft, scaffolding

Ever since I was a small child I have never been able to resist nicking a head of lavender as I pass, and squeezing it to extract the perfume. I have just done it again, and wonder how much lavender I have consumed in nearly seventy years.

There has been a chance candytuft plant growing in the corner of the wall and the doorstep outside the front door all this summer. I keep expecting it to wither, but the recent rain and today's sun have given it yet another lease of life.

It is always a pleasure to see scaffolding go. The vast structure, which has encumbered a neighbouring house for most of the summer, has almost gone. Tommorow should see the last of it; and after the clanking, relative silence should be restored.

Cobwebs, Anna's tale, crystal ball

This morning, just outside the bedroom window, hang two long threads of cobweb swaying in the breeze. Each catches the sunlight at a different moment so that it seems to contain a filament of moving light. As the threads swing to and fro, the light catches them at different points and seems to be moving in time with them, though up and down, rather than horizontally.

My friend Anna tells me of a recent encounter in a Wagamama restaurant near where she lives. She was sitting at a communal table and observed a young, pretty and beautifully dressed Japanese girl near her. Anna was engrossed in her book, Orlando Furioso, and did not notice when her food was put in front of her. Her neighbour pointed out its arrival, and they began to talk. Anna was impressed by her courtesy and gentle manners. After a while Anna returned to her book. When she looked up the girl had left. When Anna asked for her bill, she was told that it had been paid.

I seem to be making a habit of watching single, suspended raindrops. This one hung at the end of a bunch of rowan berries. It was like an extra berry and almost the same size, only colourless and completely translucent. You could see the blue sky through it and distorted fragments of the tree. But, though I looked hard, (for it seemed a temporary crystal ball), there was no sign of the future.

Nightshade, beauty, pepperdew

Berries, not just blackberries, are ripening early. This morning I note in a hedge the bright red berries of woody nightshade.

I look for a beautiful thing in the Grove on a wet, grey day and think of Francis Bacon's observation: "There is no beauty which hath not some strangeness in proportion."

Pepperdew peppers in bottle. They are small and red, and sweet and spicy at the same time.

Spinnach, doves, kids

Picking spinnach in the sunshine with yesterday's rain still on theleaves.

Every morning two doves appear outside the bedroom window, one invariably perches on the streetlamp,like an ornament.

A parked car, packed with children. All are singing and clapping their hands in time. You can hear them on the other side of the road and all the way up the High Street. One little boy has his finger in his ear.

Rain, rain, rain

The smell of warm rain.

Hearing the rain falling on the leaves of the big oak in the corner of the Grove.

The way raindrops collect on the the tips of leaves, seem to grow away from being spherical as they accumulate water, and then, as they fall from the leaf, return to become spheres again.

Squirrels, Whiskas, Stefan Zweig

We count squirrels in the Grove. There were eight in sight at one time.

Waiting for friends at the end of the Sainsbury'check out, I look for double meanings in the advertisments suspended above the aisles. One reads "Whiskas can rabbit supermeat". Idly I wonder what else it can rabbit. Or is someone going to tell me that to rabbit is invariaby an intransitive verb?

In today's paper, I read an article about Stefan Zweig, a once world famous novelist, born in Austria in 1881, and Pushkin Press, a British independent publishing house, which aims to bring European Literature in translation to a wider readership. This afternoon, on a stall in the market in the Pantiles, I see numerous titles from Pushkin Press for sale at five for £10. The cover prices range between £10 and £12. They are beautifully printed on Legend Laid Paper, with elegant cover illustrations taken from appropriate paintings. I select what I think are five titles, including two by Zweig, but I have in fact picked up six. The stallholder says "I like people who like books," and throws in the sixth, all for £10.00

Film critic, bedtime robin, laughing farmer

You cannot see passers-by on the other side of the hedge which borders our garden, but you can hear intriguing snatches of conversation. Overheard today was a woman's voice: "No plot, no nakedness, it was a shit film."

I read in in a review of the new book, Birds Britannica, of a robin that managed to build a nest in an unmade bed, while its owner had breakfast.

The following wonderful picture comes from Jack Kerouac's On the Road, which I have just gone back to: "I heard a great laugh, the greatest laugh in the world, and here came this rawhide old-timer Nebraska farmer with a bunch of other boys into the diner; you could hear his raspy cries clear across the plains, across the whole gray world of them that day. Everybody else laughed with him. He didn't have a care in the world and had the hugest regard for everybody. I said to myself, Wham, listen to that man laugh. That's the West, here I am in the West.

Sweetpeas, tomatoes, rural holiday

A few days ago I noted the pleasure of picking sweetpeas after it had rained. Today, when I picked them while it was still raining, I was surprised by their resilience and by the strength of their perfume.

In the greenhouse, the cherry tomatoes continue to ripen, but it is the big, thin-skinned, Costletto Fiorentino unevenenly shaped and of varying proportions that give the greater pleasure for their appearance and flavour.

In Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, I come across the French word villiegeture (there is an acute accent over the first e). It means a stay in the country. Reference to different dictionaries shows that it is derived from the Italian Villeggiatura, residence in a country villa. The Oxford Dictionary recognised the Italian form as an English word and quotes Shelley "Lord Byron is in villeggiatura near Leghorn.

Pudding, dragonfly, lime branches

Bread and butter pudding, creamy, crisp on top with an apricot glaze and dusted with icing sugar.

A few weeks ago I reported a dragon fly in Mount Sion, now I see one in the High Street. There are no streams and few ponds that I know of any where near either place.

In the almost compete stillness this evening, as the sky clouds over, the air is loaded with rain. The branches of the lime tree, weighted down with winged seeds, barely move and seem to nod as if in agreement with something dubious.

Acorn cups again, warden, bees

I recently mentioned the acorn cups from last year under the big oak in the Corner of the Grove. Today, I see that the squirrels have been attacking this year's young acorns and have begun to scatter the green cups beneath the tree.

A traffic warden has strayed into the Grove, where there is no road and no cars, and wanders across the grass swigging fruit juice from a plastic bottle.

Bees moving from bloom to bloom in the lavender like people at market stalls.

Bean flowers, bathing blackbird, baby in tow

Scarlet bean flowers among runner beans.

A baby blackbird, while I am watching it, hops into a large dish, which doubles as a bird bath. It sits there for a while up to its breast in water, taking a drink from time to time, then plunges its head into the water with a splash. It hops out, consumes a worm, hops back into its bath, and repeats the head dunking process.

A man peddles hard on his bike up Mount Sion. Behind the bike and attached to it by two metal arms, is a baby-buggy. In the buggy sits a baby, looking grand and pleased with itself like someone of royal descent.

Dad, parrots, icecream

A dad with shaved head, tatoos and an earing, talking pleasantly to two smartly dressed children holding his hand on each side as they walk in the street.

Three lifelike parrots made of plastic and what look like real parrot feathers in the three windows of Thurwells, the jewellery workshop in the High Street.

Eating an icecream on a bench in the Pantiles.

Small rain drops, distant music, lime tree

Sitting in the sun and feeling tiny prickles of rain on my bare arms.

Sounds of entertainment drifting up Mount Sion from the Pantiles as if the town is having a party.

Watching the lime tree opposite from a central point below it. When there is a gust of wind, it looks as though someone is shaking the tree from within the canopy. As the gust subsides the individual branches sway gently as though waving goodbye.

Seasonal fruit, Jacob Epstein, Le Corbusier

Freshly picked, local plums and Discovery apples at the Farmers' Market.

Bumping in to our biographer neighbour who tells a story about the sculptor, Jacob Epstein's first visit to Venice. The great artist removed his hat and put it beside him when he sat down. To his surprise and lasting amusement he found it gradually filling up with coins, donated by passers by.

I read in a book about Le Corbusier a quotation from the architect: "To look and then to observe and finally perhaps to discover ... It is then that inspiration may come."

Mountain ash, dark clouds, sculptors

The berries of the rowan, also known as mountain ash, are at their brightest. I recall a poem by a forgotten novelist of the 1920s called Mary Webb whose books were set in Shropshire." Come with me to the mountain tree,/ Cinnabar red with fruit is she". She would have been thinking of the tree growing in the wild rather than the tamed garden varieties round here.

Black and purple clouds layering up while the sun shines.

Talking to a neighbour who knew the sculptors Jacob Epstein and Elizabeth Frink and wrote biographies of them.

Runner beans, ladybird, sudokus

After commenting on Clare Grant's beautiful thing (Threebeautifulthings.blogspot.com) - runner beans eaten raw, I put my words into practice. This morning's crop of beans was not very large, but the beans were tender, snapped in half crisply and tasted of pure vegey green. The dip I made eventually for our guests this evening was a mixture of creme fraiche (sorry no accents) and cream cheese (about half and half) seasoned with ground, tropical pepper corns. The beans were cut into equal sized fingers. The beans and the sauce disappeared with gratifying speed. After making the sauce, I read Clare's response to my comment - something creamy and slightly sweet. Clare, I think I may have matched your requirements.

The almost pathetic satisfaction of completing the three sudokus in today's Independent - Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced.

There are two french words for ladybird. Coccinelle doesn't matter. But bete de Bon Dieu (sorry no accent) is lovely.

Verbascum, auburn, squab

For a long time I have been trying to put a name to the stately plant with broad, hairy leaves and tall spikes of small, closely ranked yellow flowers with purple stamens, which has sprung up next to the runner beans.It is verbascum, or mullein. It has lots of old, country names, among them: Aaron's rod, our lady's candle and donkey's ears.

From my favourite lookout post in the Pantiles I see a mother and her small daughter opposite the spring. Both have auburn hair. The mother poses the little girl in front of the incription about the spring's discovery. The little girl has a fluffy, toy dog in her arms which she holds up for the picture. It has a broad streak of auburn in its coat, a perfect match for mother and daughter.

Squab is not a word you use very often. But I have to use it today. The sad, baby pigeon which I met going through the neighbour's garden, was minute, fluffy and bewildered by the world - a squab. When it saw me, it stopped crashing around and remained perfectly still, believing perhaps that if it didn't move I wouldn't see it - a habit of the nest, when danger threatens perhaps?

Tabouleh, blogtalk, watering

Tabouleh. It is a sort of salad made from burgal (dried, cracked wheat), finely chopped parsley ( lots of it) and mint, lemon juice and olive oil. Good for vegetarian visitors on a hot day.

Ken, who is visiting today from London, remarks that many things here and in Tunbridge Wells are familiar from his regular reading of this blog.

Watering herbs after a hot, dry day.

Granny story, cherry tomatoes, chard

A friend and neighbour stops to talk and, inspired by the summer day, tells a story about her and her grandmother. The old lady used to have a snooze in a deckchair in the garden. The little girl, as our friend then was, used to sneak up behind her with a blade of grass and tickle her grandmother's nose, making the grandmother brush away an imaginary fly while her eyes remained closed. Our friend always expected to be discovered but, she says, her grandmother never woke up suficiently to catch her at her tricks.


Cutting chard - it is the variety with stems ranging in colour from ruby, through orange to bright yellow, which are beautifully set off by the big, dark green leaves - and presenting a bunch to Giuseppi in the Pantiles. He puts it in a jug on the counter, and promises to cook it with polenta.

Picking cherry tomatoes, which hang in delicate sprays in the greenhouse, and cutting back the leaves to let more ripen.

Sunflowers, acorn cups, tidying the garden

A vase of freshly cut sunflowers. There are conventional yellow ones and a new dark red variety. The leaves, the petals and the sharply pointed sepals all curl intriguingly, like flames caught in a photograph. I have read that the seeds and petals of sunflowers follow a spiral pattern of growth, which precisely coincides with the mathematical sequence known as the Fibonacci series. In this series each number is the sum of the previous two. It reads 1,1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 and so on.

Little brown rings cover the ground under the oak at the corner of The Grove. They are the cups which supported last year's acorns. The acorns sit in these closely scaled containers, green when new, like eggs in an egg cup.

Cutting back shrubs and plants, which intrude on new growths, and clearing weeds, keeps chaos at bay. The result is controlled chaos - perhaps the definition of a living garden.

Emmanuel the Magnificent, butterflies, pigeon

There is an African charity party in the Pantiles. It is organised by Stephanie Benson, the Ghanian princess, who runs the Cafe Chocolat. Emmanuel the Magnificent is a magnificent acrobat and juggler. He performs with a group of African drummers, on the stage opposite The Corn Exchange. He spins basins on a wand while going through miraculous gyrations. He juggles with straw hats, catching them on his head. He brings small children on to the stage and teaches them to throw and catch the hats. He makes the audience clap in time as he strides faster and faster round the stage. The drums increase in tempo. This is Tunbridge Wells on a Saturday afternoon.

Butterflies are scarce nowadays. Yet this afternoon our garden seems full of them. They are Large Whites, a common variety once. But how delicately etched are the browny-black tips of their wings! My book says that it is the females which have two spots on their wings. It must be ladies' day.

The squeak of a pigeon's wings before it crashes into the branches of the lime tree opposite.

Wind, Clematis, leaf

In the Grove, after the rain this morning, the afternoon wind blows warm scents from the trees in the restored sunshine. The leaves rustle reassuringly.

A macropetala clematis with its blue, bell shaped flowers, clambers up a wall in the front garden of a house, which I pass most days.

A dead leaf from a shrub which I couldn't identify is pressed into the pavement. Too early for autumn, it glows with a rich, golden yellow, shot with sunset reds. You don't have to look far for things worth recording here.

Fungus, sun, bamboo

Early this morning four thin, tall and delicate fungi were sprouting from the compost round the stem of a beech sapling in the Grove. Someone, as I have mentioned before, has topped this tree which is fighting back, having sent out defiant shoots from its fractured stem. The fungi were not in themselves important, but with the dew still on the flat membranes of their caps, and the early sun highlighting them, they seemed important and beautiful.

Sitting in the sun outside a cafe having a cup of tea and a cheese and pickle sandwich. The early sun was warm and inspiring. As I was finishing, the owner came to the door and remarked on the quality of the morning. I agreed and had a second tea and sandwich to celebrate it.

Bamboo growing in huge pots outside The Compasses.

Reconnected, Afghan girl, poached egg

Being reconnected to the Internet after modem problems.

A reproduction in The Independent of the renowned National Geographic magazine cover from 1985 showing an Afghan girl refugee staring out at you with grey blue eyes which seem to take over the page and everyone who looks at it. The portrait was shot by the photo journalist Steve McCurry. Seventeen years later he rediscoved her. She had not seen the photograph until it was shown to her in January 2002. Her name is Sharbat Gula and she is described as a "shy, devout mother of three children." In the April 2002 issue of the magazine she again became the subject for the cover. This time, completely shrouded in a burka, she is shown holding the original photograph.

A poached duck egg with finally chopped pancetta.