Pushy clematis, buttercups, foxhole

A clematis montana alba grows through the bay tree in our front garden. Last year the tree had to be pruned and the clematis didn't flower. I thought it might be dead, but this year its white, star-shaped flowers are pushing through on top of the bay and at the sides.

There is an unculitivated strip of garden in front of one of the houses in Mount Sion. Recently it was a mass of bluebells. Now the bluebells have, for the most part, gone to seed; and amid the fresh grass has appeared a galaxy of buttercups.

A deep hole has appeared in the shrubbery bordering the drive, which I have to cross when I go to the vegetable garden. There is no sign of the fox; if I were smaller, I might, like Alice, be tempted to plunge into the hole. Then, who knows what?

Copper, bare wall, stretched leaves

The colour of copper beeches in full sun shine, now that the leaves are fully open, is at its best and deepest today.

Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand of the pleasure which he felt in contemplating with "his heart beating faster, a wall of the Acropolis, a bare wall".

In the Grove the wind drives at the new leaves on the trees, which stretch away from it.

Crabbed age and youth, everything but treacle, limestone paving

In the supermarket, a very old, small and frail lady is provided with help by a strapping girl twice her size who adjusts her pace courtiously to that of the customer.

An old shop sign in the pub reads: " D B Hanson, Camden Road, Tunbridge Wells. Prams, Mangles and everything but Treacle. Easy terms. From 2 Shillings per week.

Some honey coloured limestone paving arrives to replace the ugly cement slabs which we have put up with for too long on the path to the front door.

blue mist, cows, halo of stamens

When you look long enough at the dense blue flowers of the ceonothus in bloom just now in people's gardens, a blue mist seems to grow round the shrub almost like steam.

Cows grazing in a field all face in the same direction.

The slight yellow poppies which I put in a vase a few days ago have shed their petals and leave a halo of gold-tipped stamens clustered round the green ovary.

Flying sunshade, ants and lettuce, sashaying sheet of paper

In the Pantiles yesterday, a gust of wind picks up a sunshade from outside a cafe and blows it into the air, where it turns a somersault and lands without hurting anyone.

Joyce tells me of a Thai restaurant in London, which was infested with ants on her last visit. When she referred to the invasion and pointed out that it wasn't much fun to eat surrounded by ants, the management said that the ants must have arrived with the lettuce.

From the train outside Charing Cross, I see a sheet of white paper shashaying down in front of an office block fronted with black glass.

All books, wisteria, tree-top sea

I step aside as three bargain-hunting women barge into the Oxfam bookshop in Chapel Place under the impression that it is the more general sort of charity shop selling discarded clothes, lonely teacups, prints of imperial India and the like. "It's all boo oks!" one of the women says, her north country accent doing nothing to hide her disappointment.

Pendulous blooms of wisteria are outside the study window, and beyond, across the road there is more wisteria on the wall of the house opposite.

Coming out of the Grove this windy afternoon I hear the sound of the sea in the tree-tops.

Daisies, coppiced oak, hieroglyphic rooftops

The grass is still uncut in the Grove. And the daisies accordingly flourish. They look like stars.

An oak sapling has been pruned in someone's front garden and though only a couple of feet high it has begun to sprout new branches in all directions.

I look up at rooftops and notice how lines of aerials describe hieroglyphs across the sky.

Raindrops, happy talker, pied wagtail

Big drops of rain this afternoon, and so widely spaced that you could almost run between them without getting wet.

People on mobile phones seem to talk louder than they have to, which allows you to overhear some interesting, if puzzling, statements. "I'm happy," shouts the man walking across the pedestrian bridge at the station this afternoon.... "because I'm seeing someone. I'm happy in that respect."

Pied wagtails often turn up in the Grove. They are sprightly creatures with a pretty, swooping flight. No bird has a name, which better describes it, for it is both pied and manages to wag its tail as it hops on the ground in pursuit of food.

Starlings' nest, grass in seed, dog's pub

So intrusive have been the blackbirds with their fluent song and their territorial squabbles, that I have not mentioned the starlings. They are nesting in the space on top of a corinthian column embedded in the wall of one of the two houses opposite (we look out in two directions). Compared with the blackbirds they lead a respectable middle class existence bringing up their family with determination and energy. The capital of this column could have been designed specifically for starlings to nest in.

The grass in the Grove has not been mowed for a time and it is going to seed in places, a pleasing sight in an orderly context.

Outside the Grove Tavern there is a plastic container, on which are written the words: "Water for Dogs". This is a rare facilty in this country, but I noticed, when we were in Munich, that Gasthouses (more or less the equivalent of pubs) nearly all provide such a service .

Fighting blackbirds, passing push chairs, when losing is winning

The two male blackbirds are still fighting. This morning the are at it on the pavement opposite, and this afternoon clashing in the air above the fence between us and our neighbour. Cherchez la femme? But there doesn't appear to be one at the moment. So it must be just about territory.

Two people pass each other on the pavement outside the post office, with push chairs. One is an old tramp and his push chair is loaded with his posessions. The other is a young women; in hers is a small baby.

The relief when you forget to do the lottery and your regular numbers don't come up.

Blue Angel, green asparagus, hedge connects

DVDs of old black and white films sometimes astonish by keeping you glued to the screen. So it is with The Blue Angel in which a young Marlene Dietrich sings, Falling in Love Again for the first time, and succeeds in vamping and, in the end, destroying the poor old school teacher who falls for her.

Freshly picked green asparagus from the farmers' market is vegetable perfection for supper yesterday evening with sweet Italian ham and a little melted butter.

The arch, which I have been hoping for when the two sides of the 8ft hedge on either side of the front gate make contact, is about to take shape.

Playing the game,argument, dandelion moon

A little boy is playing hide-and-seek with his father. The little boy covers his eyes as dad runs towards a tree to hide behind it. The little boy takes his hands away from his eyes as soon as dad has turned his back, and watches him hide, a naughty smile on his innocent face.

Reading this morning Bouvard and Pecochet by Gustave Flaubert, I note this vignette from a description of one of those arguments which occur in France, and which the French enjoy ridiculing as much as taking part in. "The notary stopped him and raising himself at each word on to the tips of his toes, said: 'I find your system completely immoral....'". The motion described contains the essence of a certain sort of comic behavior, ridiculous because the person performing it is taking himself so seriously, that he cannot see how daft he must look.

I spy on top of a high wall a dandelion clock. It rises into the sun and the perfect seed-head shines agains the blue sky like a full moon. I don't have my camera so have now to content myself with a verbal photo.

Periwinkles, Jack Russell, wisteria

The popular ground-cover plant Periwinkle (vinca) is in flower all over the place. Sometimes the blush-purple flowers seem overwhelmed by the dark green leaves, but this year the flowers are holding their own.

There is a Jack Russell in the Compasses pub nowadays. Someone must love him. A red lipstick imprint today sits in the middle of his forhead.

The scent of the wisteria, which climbs over the front door, floats in the garden.

Dispute continues, floating seeds, plural of mouse

The two male blackbirds, which were at war yesterday morning, were still in dispute in the evening. We watched them from from the garden, on the roof of the house opposite. Their sillouhettes stood out against the bright yellow evening sky emphasing their blackness. They challenged and retreated, and then flew up in the air to clash, before dropping back to the roof. One seemed to be defending the chimney stack; the other, he with the ruffled feather still on his breast, wanted him away. This morning there is no sign of them, though they, or some other blackbirds have been singing their heads off, since the first light.

It is snowing steadily in the vegetable garden; a non-stop cloud of pussy willow seeds drifts over the beds. The seeds even settle, leaving tatters of lace on the rows of seedlings.

The plural of mouse is mice, but what if the mouse is a computer mouse? A sub-editor on the Independent seems to know the answer. The headline of a survey feature in today's paper reads: The Ten Best Mouses.

Disputed territory, maze, swifts

From our bedroom window this morning I see two male blackbirds on the roof opposite. One has a loose feather sticking up on his breast. It is clear that they are in dispute. One sits on top of the roof; the other challenges his position. Suddenly they both take off and clash in mid-air before descending to land separately. This continues for most of the morning.

The terrace at the back of Sankeys pub/restaurant has new tables and chairs. Very smart and popular in this fine weather. The only problem is that they are too close together. Finding your way to your table is difficult for customers and staff, especially when customers, in an expansive mood, push their chairs back. It really is a sort of maze and requires skill to calculate the best way through, and it's fun to watch others, once you have your seat.

Sitting outside, I hear the screaming of swifts for the first time this summer. I look up and see, flying high, two swooping and tilting over Tunbridge Wells. Far, far above them is passenger jet looking half their size.

Antepasti, silent mobile, sweet cicely

Sitting with a glass of white wine at one of the new tables outside Giuseppi's and sharing a generous plate of antipasti in the sunshine.

A man sits at a table with his mobile phone in front of him. It seems that it remains for him disturbingly out of use. He looks at the keyboard with an urgent longing.

The sweet cicely, which I have always had in the bed in front of the dining room, is in flower again. The perfume of its white flowers suggest annis as do the seed when they appear. The leaves can be used to give flavour and add sweetness to a gooseberry pie. It is one of the first garden herbs to emerge in the spring and among the last to die down.

Lovage, raindrop train, shadow bluebells

Lovage is sometimes called sea parsley,though leaves resemble those of celary. It has come up looking strong and healthy in the vegetable garden. With its slightly bitter flavour it needs to be used sparingly in salad, but makes a sterling soup. Soften a chopped potato, a chopped onion and a good handful of lovage, in butter; add chicken stock until the vegetables are ready to liquidise or to push through a sieve. A little lemon juice with salt and pepper fine tunes the taste, and a good dollop of double cream gives an unctious finish.

Through the bedroom window, this morning, I watch raindrops running along the telephone wire, pearly bright, constantly moving, like the cabins of an overhead cable car.

Bluebells grow in partial shade and and when not growing in woodland, the flowers conform to the pattern of shadows cast by individual trees. When there is no sun the flowers indicate the area where shadows would have been.

Swans, black parrots, oak catkins

It raises the spirit to see swans half unfold their wings when swimming as though to serve as sails.

The "Black Parrot" tulips, which I planted last winter in a large and shallow round pot, are in bloom. Their tattered petals are dark purple, rather than black, almost the colour of the thunder clouds, which are hanging around today.

The big oak at the corner of the Grove is just in leaf. The pale yellowy-green, infant leaves burst out of brown buds, and delicate strings of catkins in the same tone of green, hang down among them.

Mussolini, water tasting, bluebells

Incidents during our recent visit to Munich keep popping up in my memory. We were taken to a long established restaurant called Osteria Italiana, known to have been, though not vaunted as, a favourite haunt of Adolf Hitler. No sign of that dictator, but one of the waiters bore a striking resemblance to Mussolini.

At the Chalybeate spring in the Pantiles some tourists sample the spa water in wine glasses. They hold the glasses up to the light as though it is wine. My own tasting notes: "A mellow, bilge-water, brown colour. A hint of sewer on the bouquet, and a distinctive, rusty palate with sluggish undertones of wealden clay."

Bluebells in our small garden. Over the years I did my best to dissuade them from growing here, because they did not seem to belong in a slightly formal town garden. Once, before the houses in our road were built, there must have been carpets of bluebells on this hillside, because I have noticed them in other front gardens. Now I have given up and welcome them as the delightful visitors they are. So we, rather than they, seem to be the intruders. And they are English bluebells, their blooms falling to one side of the stem, rather than the more showy, introduced Spanish variety.

Purple sprouting brocolli, cut grass, violets

Protected from the pigeons by nylon fleece and netting, the purple sprouting brocolli, has survived the winter and now sends forth its close knit purple flowers. Steamed and served with anchovey butter (you mash some butter with chopped anchovies and a little lemon juice), hollandaise sauce, or just a little melted butter, there is little better at this time of year, even though the first asparagus is expected.

They are cutting the grass in the Grove. The machine emits petrol fumes, but you can smell the cut grass through them.

Violets pushing up between crazy paving stones seem unusually fat.

Baby turnips, sauvigon blanc, voting

Baby turnips cooked slowly in just a little olive oil on a slow heat in a pan with the lid on, and served with finely chopped parsley.

Sauvignon blanc can be overwhelming sometimes, too scented and herbal, but when these characteristics are restrained as in the wines of the upper Loire, it is good for a summer, mid-day drinking. You look for and find a steeliness in the taste.

Voting in a church hall, empty except for the supervisors who are half asleep, is a surreal, dream-like experience.

Spotted Dog, The Wasteland, date and time

The Spotted Dog near Fordcombe just outside Tunbridge Wells used to have fine views over the Weald from the terraces at the back. Then a neigbouring landowner planted some trees just below the terraces because he didn't like the idea or the sound of people enjoying themselves. The tree grew and the view was obscured. Now with a new owner of the pub and of the neighbouring land, a number of the trees have been cut down restoring the view. Lunch there at one of our favourite haunts with daughter, Pippa was a double treat for us. And the sun shone.

Lucas reminds me that the Starnbergsee, which we visited when in Munich (photographs in earlier post) is mentioned in TS Eliot's Wasteland.
"Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee and talked for an hour."
We, too, went to the Hofgarten in the centre of Munich and talked for an hour, though we had forgoten the Eliot connection.

A reader's letter in the Independent points out that tomorrow Thursday May 4, at 2 minutes and three seconds past one am, the day, date and time will be: 01: 02.o3 04 05 06.

Camelia, cows, pieris,

A tall camelia, in a front garden, sheds its bright blossoms, which form an opaque, scarlet apron on the pavement beneath it.

In case it comes in useful, according to figures in a book of statistics given away with the Independent, there are around 1.5bn cows in the world. Roughly a quarter are in India. The UK cow population us about 10.5m.

There is a shrub call pieris which is showing off its assets in a lot of gardens round here. It has clusters of creamy white flowers, which hang like bunches of grapes, and the new leaves are a brilliant red.

Whisker, doing the right thing, strong drink

I hear, on the platform at Tunbridge Wells station, a middle aged man describe a vehicle as using "only a whisker of petrol".

"He wasn't clever, but he always did the right thing". Lord Fisher, First Sea Lord in World War I on Edward VII. Two English virtues described in one brief sentence.

Now here's a word to enjoy: Potvaliant. It is to be found in Johnson's Dictionary, and means heated with courage by strong drink.

Pretzels, the owl that never was, dandelion diversion

A good year for dandelions

Pretzels are taken for granted for people who live in Munich, but for visitors, these freshly made twists of glazed and salted bread are a special pleasure. You eat them as an accompaniment to most meat and fish dishes. They go particularly well with the delicate Weiswurst, white sausages, served warm in a bowl of the water in which they have been cooked. I recall, with particular pleasure, the pretzels served with hot, barbecued, whole smoked mackerel at the Chinese tower in the Englischegarten.

A walk in the woods behind Nymphenburg Schloss was a special pleasure because of the ducks and wild flowers, but we didn't see the owl, which was supposed to inhabit a particular tree by an arched bridge over a canal. The absent owl became like a character in a fairy story upon whom a spell had been placed, or who had placed a spell on you.

Back in Tunbridge Wells, when I remark to my friend Peter, who is driving back from the supermarket, that it is a good year for dandelions, he turns right into Major York's Road instead of keeping straight on home. "I want to show you something", he says. In Rustall, he reverses ; and there on the grass verge where the daffodils have just faded is a mass of dandelions, dense and golden, such as I have never seen before , a carpet which bareley allows the new grass to show through.

Lake Starnberg, calm, mystical and clear.

Reflecting on reflections


Watching a gentle swell from a garden at the edge of a lake.

Horse-chestnut leaves, duck, greeting

Both here, and in Munich where spring seems to be arriving at the same time as ours, you can almost see the buds of horse-chestnuts opening as though they are gloves into which fingers are being wriggled.

From the balcony at the rear of our flat, you can hear, as the sun sets, the sound of water-birds saying goodnight in the Englischegarten.

The universal greeting "Greuss Got", used everywhere in Bavaria, (but not elsewhere in Germany) by everyone and at all times of day and night, is a pleasing custom to which you quickly become accustomed.

Dandelion salad, sea-gull woman, wood anenomes and cowslips

A salad of blanched dandelion (Loevenzahn) leaves by at the Zum Haering restaurant at Tutzing on lake Starneberg. Loevenzahn, like dent-de-lion, hence the English dandelion, means lions teeth and refers to the indentations of the leaves.

A woman friend, with whom we are dining, attacks the head of the fish, which she has been eating with repetitive, prods of her fork, neglecting the help of a knife, and devours every morsel of the content. Her face is lit by the fierce, sensual pleasure of a bird enjoying its prey.

Wood anenomes are, at this time, the dominant spring flower in the woods, road-sides and parks of Munich. The white, star-shaped flowers are ubiquitous, and are sometimes joined by the blue, which I have seen cultivated but never wild in England. I note, with pleasure, because they are now so rare in England, plenty of cowslips growing alongside the anenomes.

Chewable toothbrush, suprised by Elgar, wild garlic

In Stanstead airport gents, I resist the invitation to brush my teeth with a "chewable toothbrush". The sign above the dispenser says; "Chew and dispose. Cleans teeth. Freshens breath". You get two for £1.

I enter a Munich taxi with Caroline Bush. The driver has the radio on. We continue talking and over our conversation, I am surprised and a little moved to hear the strains of Pomp and Circumstance. The driver is amused by the coincidence. "Elgar," he says.

In several of the restaurants where we eat, I notice that wild garlic is on the menu. As in this country, but I think for rather longer in Germany, the early leaves of the wild flower, which we also call ramsons, has been in fashion with chefs. In Germany it is known as Baerlauch (I wish I knew how to do umlouts and accents on this system). I taste a smooth green, slightly spicey soup modulated by cream and stock.

ANNOUNCEMENT

Although I hope to have access to a computer on one or two occasions, there will intervals in transmission for the next few day, which I will be spending in Munich. Be good.

Nest-building, potato planting, timing

It seems to me that in this house we might be said to live in close intimacy with blackbirds. At this time of year, they declare their territory ouside the bedroom window from the first light; and for the last few years , they have nested in the wisteria above the front door or in the bay tree just to the right of it. All day long we hear their, urgent, staccato warning cry. This morning, as I raise the blind, I see a male and a female blackbird on the wall of the house opposite. The female has a sheaf of grass in her beak, the male perches opposite her. After a while, the female flies across the road and lands on our hedge. The male waits, as it were on guard, covering her movements with alert turns and tilts of his head. She waits for a while on the hedge, before making for the bay tree, while the male takes her place on the hedge. The various stages of progress towards the nesting place are marked by lengthy pauses. The last I see of them is the female diving into the depth of the bay, and the male sitting on the outer edge of one of its branches. Their progress towards the nesting place seems to be marked by a desire not to draw attention to it, as though they want to deceive onlookers about their destination - a tactic which we noticed last year when the birds were feeding their young.

Planting properly chitted potatoes, as tradition decrees, during the Easter weekend.

The feeling of satisfaction at having done your gardening in the morning when it is dry, and missed the rain in the afternoon.

Candles, woodruff, matt-forming, warmth

There a quite a few magnolia trees near us. They are currently sporting tall, upright buds which look like candles - more like candles than the horse-chestnuts, which come later and whose flowers are usually compared to candles.

A good many years ago we planted sweet woodruff under the hedge which fronts the house on two sides. The intention was that it should spread the full length of the hedge and create a long carpet of tiny, white flowers in late Spring. There are still a few gaps, so I was glad to see a plant in a pot at the WI market, which will help to fill them. If you dry the leaves, they smell of new-mown hay, and may be added to summer drinks.

The promised sunshine comes late today, not until the afternoon; but when it does, after some showers, it is warm; and warm is really appreciated, after the chill winds and the snow of a few days ago. In the Grove, buds are opening and children appear in the playgound, as though drawn out by the same, unaccustomed heat.

Bug walk, words, live music

There is an illustrated plan of Calverley Grounds at the entrance to the park. I watch a tiny beatle walk very slowly over a patch of grass on the map, on it way to the shelter of some trees.

There are 988,968 words in the English language according to Global Language Monitor, a San diego based linguistic consultancy. As new words are added regularly, there will soon be more than a million.


The following groups are listed in Sankey's restaurant in its Live Music Line Up for St George's Day:

The Quiet one
Big Red 1
Matt The Gadd
Defenders of the Planet Earth
Rumour

Twelve hours of live music are promised.

Starch, hiding cat, bamboo tail

A film of starch detaches itself from the side of the non-stick pan, which sits in the sink after porridge has been cooked in it. The pan is half full of water and the delicate, tissue-paper thin moulding will soon disintegrate, but somehow you feel that it deserves better.

The pretty marmalade cat finds a temporary house for itself under the frame of nylon fleece, which I have erected over the purple sprouting brocolli against maurading pigeons. The cat pokes its head through a hole in the fleece. The creature, like other pretty cats I have known, seems to have cultivated an infuriating cuteness, which demands foregiveness for any crime it may commit or have committed.

In front of a house in Berkely Road is a clump of thin bamboos. One of the stripey stalks, bent over as a result of yesterday's snow, waves to and fro just above the ground. It looks like the very long, thin tail of a dragon.

Umbrella procession, being right, Jafacain

In the rain this afternoon, an extended flock of golf umbrellas proceeds up Mount Sion. Beneath the umbrellas are smartly dressed men and women wearing those badges which are pinned on at conferences or official occasions. Some of the men wear dress uniform. On the umbrellas is printed a reference to this year's 400th anniversary of the foundation of Tunbridge Wells.

A book called The Art of Always Being Right by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer attracts my attention in Halls book shop. "You don't need that," says the woman assistant, "you're a man." I buy it all the same.

According to the papers, cockney and other inner city dialects are giving way to an Afro-Carribean dialect called Jafaican. Creps means training shoes; Yoot, child/children; Jamming, hanging around; Nuff, really, very; Sick, good. It strikes me as interesting that in one paper an interviewee indicated that a slang word, which is now considered old fashioned is wicked, to mean good, fantastic.

Diamonds, sudoku, hyacinths

Snow is a rarity here nowadays. So it is a pleasure to see the result of a heavy fall last night. Glinting in the sun, a line of snow on the telphone wire outside the bedroom window soon melts, leaving huge drops like diamond earings.

In the Independent I read that a classic sudoku grid contains 5,472,730,538 unique combinations of numbers. Apparently sales of pencils have increased by 700 per cent since the sudoku boom.

Though it has turned to slush or streams of water every where else, the snow has not yet melted in the triangular flower bed outside the public library. It is pierced by the undaunted, blue flower heads of hyacinths.

Stuffed olives, French poppy, bamboo poles

Big green queen olives stuffed with feta cheese are a beautiful thing.

The French word for poppy is coquelicot, a lovely word.

At Homebase I find buy a dozen 8ft bamboo poles, which will replace those, which have been bent and broken by the weight of beans and sweetpeas.

Out of Africa, invisible feet, bare branches

At the farmers market, I bump into Clare Grant, the inventer of the "three beautiful things" approach to web logging. Over a cup of coffee, she gives me a brief account of her 12-week African odyssey and some of the beautiful and less than beautiful things that happened during it.

In a the window of an outfitters in Mount Pleasant, a headless lay figure is equipped with a man's jacket, some blue jeans and a pair of sandles, but the sandles are arranged beneath the jeans without benefit of feet. Or the feet are invisible.

The branches of trees are still bare, and their shadows distinct. I realize that the shape of the branches, so intriguing to look at and to draw, will soon disappear, to give way to the swarming canopies of summer.

Repairs complete, parsley, Provence

A door has been re-hinged and re-hung, a rotting frame replaced and window frames painted. A smell of new paint hangs in the house, and we have the house to ourselves.

Last year's parsley, the herb, which moderates the taste of fish and meat with its verdant, vegetable scent and bitter charm, is in leaf again, and cutting a large bunch for the kitchen, is today's greatest pleasure. I smell the parsley (the flat leaf variety, which I usually grow) as I write the word.

After reading Marcel Pagnol's Childhood Memories, I watch again on DVD the two films which he made in the Provencal countryside or his childhood - Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources. I enjoy them all the more because the scenary and the rural life depicted is what I have just left in the pages of the four books, which the Memories comprise.

Words repeated, human resource, chorus

An old French cookery book La Veritable Cuisine de Famille by Tante Marie, which I unearthed yesterday, contains the following modest apology at the foot of the introduction: " With the aim of complete clarity in our recipes, we have not been afraid to repeat a word several times in the same sentence. Our readers will foregive the absence of style in a work which makes no claim to it".

"Human resources", is a management term which I have never liked and only partially understood. Until today that is, when the blackbird and the robin come as usual to join me while I am digging. As usual, they wait one (the robin) almost at my feet and the other (the blackbird) on the fence, until I turn over a clod, which reveals a live creature for them to eat, and down one of them swoops. It occurs to me that I am working for them, and that what I am to them can best be described as a human resource.

As distinct from last year, the black birds and other birds outside our window wake me early in the morning just now. I missed this chorus last year and wondered if the birds had deserted that side of the house, and now remember that the fault was probably mine as I had an ear infection, and had become temporarily deaf.

Reversing, more signs of spring, last year's spuds

A dustbin truck, one of those, which chews up the refuse from mechanically tipped wheelie-bins, bears down on me as it reverse from Little Mount Sion into Berkeley Road. A recorded voice tries to gain my attention over the noise of the engine. As I dodge out of the way, I realize it is saying: "Danger: reversing vehicle."

At this time of the year anticipated flowers appears on the triangular flower-bed or shrubbery known locally as "the village green", in the form of the yellow, star-shaped lesser celandine, and the bright green petal-like bracts, surrounding the small green flowers of euphorbia.

Digging over last year's potato patch, I collect a bowl full of small King Edwards, which I missed when lifting them last year.

Squirrels, periwinkle, door back on hinges

In the Grove, there are squirrels everywhere, perhaps too many. They run about or balance on branches making noises - half quack, half squawk.

Periwinkles are in flower; blue on the "village green", the rarer, white in our garden.

The door to a cubbyhole, where tools are kept, is back on its hinges after leaning, in a collapsed state, against the surrounding wall.

Circuit, no curtains, piano player

Most days I follow a similar circuit to the High Street, through the Grove, along Berkeley Road, down Mount Sion. Everything seems to be the same and yet the more I pay attention the more I notice changes - buds opening, detritus accumulating, the sky ever changing, the sunlight falling at a different angle. The more I keep this log, the more changes I see. Today the tip of a magnolia bud puts forth a tiny pink tongue.

A woman is playing a piano, her back to the window, into which I glance as I pass by. I catch the sway of her body as her hands cross the keys.

The curtains, which cover the top of the bay window in our bedroom has been taken down, to reveal the whole frame. I enjoy seeing so much more of the sky, of the tulip tree and the house opposite, as I sip my morning tea.

Captains, surreal picture, humps

There's a sign in Sainsbury's above a desk at the end of a shopping aisle. "Today's checkout captain, " it says. "Let's have one other gaudy night: call to me my sad captains; fill our bowls once more; let's mock the midnight bell."

At the end of the row of checkouts in Sainsbury's, is a picture-window. Looking on to a corner of waste land on which grows some bedraggled trees, it frames a surreal picture. Distributed among the branches of the trees, hang several transparent, plastic bags. Behind the trees, is a steep bank and a wall on top of that. In the background is a tower crane, its horizontal mast extended and waiting for something to happen. A watery sun beams into the window causing the reflections of people in the store to hover in the glass.

Half way down the terrace where we live, opposite the entrance to another road, there is a sign with arrows pointing in either direction. Above one arrow are the words: humps 300 yards; above the other, humps 600 yards. You know what it means. But you wonder what it could mean.

Spring visitors

Today I see George W Bush and Condoleezza Rice perched on a tree in the Grove discussing what appears to be a calendar.

Leap-sheep, charm, lap dog

We say "leap-frog, the French say leap-sheep, saute-mouton.

"Charm", said Jean Cocteau, "is the ability to solicit the answer "yes" before the question has been posed."

A woman in the Grove with a Hungarian setter puppy, sits on a bench. The dog jumps up and she cradles it like a child. "You're getting too big for my lap," she says. It rolls its eyes.

Alsatians and washing machines, seagull, grass-seed

A man comes to see to our washing machine. He has two alsatians in his landrover. "Say, 'hullo", he says. I say 'hullo', though the invitation is directed to the dog in the front passenger seat, rather than to me. Dissapointingly, it snarls, rears up at the half-open window and begins to bark its head off.

A lone seagull flies from right to left accross the strip of sky visible above the High Street as I walk down South Grove. It is travelling more or less in the direction of the sea, about 30 miles away. Could it mean that summer is really on the way?

In the Grove, they have sown grass seed on the exposed areas of brown earth left after the path resurfacing. Pigeons, strutting and pecking like chickens, are making a meal of it.

Centipede, birds return, daffodil scents

I like putting a name to things so the garden wildlife book I found the other day came in useful when, while digging, I bumped into a creature which I have been familiar with all my life - a centipede. But which one? My book defines it as Geophilus carpophagus. It is reddish brown and has 45 - 55 pairs of legs. I get more pleasure from looking it up than watching it wriggling back into the soil.

This morning I was missing the backbirds and robins which kept me company in the vegetable garden last year. Had the marmalade cat scared them off? No sooner had I had thought the thought, than a robin and a male and female blackbird arrived on the fence together. Were they the same birds as last year? The robin certainly wasn't, being younger and sleeker, though it still put its head on one side when it looked at me. That, I guess, is in the nature of the bird. The blackbirds might have been the same, but there are so many of them around, and I can't tell one from the other.

A beautiful thing is the scent of the freshly picked daffodils arranged in a vase in the hall.

Roller skates, pollen, primulas

I read in the evening paper that the London police have abandoned the roller skates with which they were issued to pursue micreants in the London parks, because the baddies have hit on the ingenious idea of running away on the grass, where roller-skating cops cannot follow.

Clouds of yellow pollen blow into the air from the Leylandii bordering the drive of the house opposite.

Pale yellow, almost white primulas planted in a basement window box this morning match those which have been growing in the flower bed above them for several years.

chopsticks, wind, Dombey & Son

According to some statistics published in today's paper, the Chinese get through 45 billion disposable chopsticks every year, which account for 25 million fully grown trees.

A gallumphing wind in the Grove has scattered small branches and twigs all over the place. In the tree tops, it roars like the sound traffic on a motorway.

My accademic neighbour, whom I meet in the street this afternoon, advises me to read Dombey and Son, when I tell him how much, after a trouble start, I enjoyed reading Bleak House.

Train whistle, pigeon v squirrel, cold streetcar

Occasionally, when the wind is in the right direction, you can hear a train whistle, when it enters the tunnel, which goes underneath Mount Sion from the station. Today in the rain, the sound comes across as a mournful cry rather than a whistle.

A pigeon and a squirrel occupy for a moment or two the same stretch of fence. The squirrel pursues the pigeon, which, after a tame waddle, takes off.

In Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper's book Paris after the Liberation, I read about a production in Paris of Tennessee William's play A Street Car Named Desire, called, in French Un Tramway nomme desire, in November 1949. To convey a sweltering, hot summer night, the play opens to the sound of crickets, but the crickets, not helped by the absence of heating in the fuel shortage of that winter, had a hard job to convince the freezing audience.

Spring rain, geese, two Joes in the park

Today smells of warm rain and spring, and the birds celebrate the change of temperature noisily from early in the morning. The majority of daffodils are about to flower at last. And everyone is getting ready for April pilgrimages.

Twice today I hear geese honking and twice I see a pair flying overhead in the purposeful way that geese have. There can be no doubt: they know where they are going.

Entering the Grove, I hear Giles' cheerful voice behind me: "Hullo, Joe!". I turn and so does a girl who is walking just behind me. "Hullo", I shout. "Hullo", she turns and shouts. Two Joes, or more probably a Joe and a Jo, respond simultaneously to the greeting intended originally for only one of them.

Shadow, Richard Cumberland, sowing

This morning, in bright sunshine, I see, on the road, the shadow of a bird in flight. I look up, but the bird has flown on.

A new plaque has appeared on the house at the end of our terrace. It tells us that the playwright and Home Secretary, Richard Cumberland lived in a house on the site between 1786 and 1793. The late Roger Farthing, whose book on Mount Sion was published three years ago, tells the following story involving him.
Lord North, another resident of Mount Sion, who settled there after losing America and doubling the national debt, began to go blind, and as the Maidstone Journal of 1787 reported, was " led by the affectionate hand of a dutiful daughter". Richard Cumberland one day walked across the Grove to visit him, and he took Cumberland's arm and asked to be conducted to the spring. "I have a general recollectiion of the way," said Lord North, "and if you will make me understand the posts upon the footpaths and the steps about the Chapel, I shall remember them in future." "I could not lead blind Gloucester to the cliff," added Cumberland. "I executed my affecting trust and brought him back to his family..." Two hundred and twenty years later, though Cumberland's house is no longer standing, the steps down to the Chapel, the Chapel itself and the Spring are still there.

A hint of warmth for the first time for a several months encourages me today to sow some broad beans and lettuce.

Go-Between, amarillys, bird-map

A dvd of The Go-Between, Joseph Losey's film (with screen play by Harold Pinter) of the novel by L. P Hartley, which came free with the Sunday Telegraph, is well worth the cost of the newspaper. It seems better than I remember it when I first saw it; and the story too, is something - a 12-year old boy's involvment in the carryings-on of grown ups, which he cannot understand a the time - which I can appreciate now more than when I first read the book. It is as though, like the narrator, who is recalling the episode in his childhood, I too have grown up.

A bunch of tall, dark-red amaryllis on thick stems which have, so far, supported the heavy flowers, without breaking under the strain as they sometimes do, is a rich and wondeful sight.

With this morning's Independent is a poster-sized map showing the long distances, which migrant birds fly to reach the British Isles every year. It reminds us that swallows will soon be arriving here. Some of them will have flown all the way from the southern tip of South Africa.

Erik Satie, busy pigeons, daffodils

The gentle sound of the pianist, Aldo Ciccolini playing Satie, especially Trois Gymnopedies and Six Gnossiennes - music for a lazy afternoon, melancholic, meditative.

A busy day for pigeons; they are flying around all over the place. I watch them not entirely with equanimity, as I know they have learnt how eat my purple sprouting brocolli through the netting which I use to keep them off.

The few daffodils, which have flowered in the vegetable garden, where they are grown for cutting, express their thanks for being taken indoors, by releasing a powerful scent.

Python, any time, fashions

A man extracts some flexible, metal ducting from a van in Mount Sion, with great difficulty. It is almost a foot in diameter and curled into several coils, making it almost impossible to manoeuvre. It looks like a giant, silver python.

Sticking out from among the leaves of a camelia is the top of a "no parking sign"; all you see of the dusty, weathered sign are the words "any time".

"It does not become a man of years to follow the fashion, either in his thinking or his dress". Goethe.

Mother-of-pearl, winding paths, headless bollard

The sky, this morning, viewed from bed, a cup of tea in my hand, is mother-of-pearl as the sun tries to infiltrate the grey cloud blanket.

From the Pantiles and other view points below the Common, you see paths winding upwards through the woods; each of them seems to make a mysterious promise to would-be explorers.

Someone has removed the translucent, plastic column of the "keep left" bollard on the traffic island opposite the entrance fo Sainsbury. What remains is the base - a pair of long-life electric bulbs surrounded by a circular reflector under a glass, screwed-down cover. It remains switched on and looks like an electric flower.

Scooter-balloon, wildlife, "livre dangereux"

Yesterday, I saw the wind swell a bin liner, and blow it upwards like a living, swaying mushroom, while it was still anchored to its litter bin. Today, a plastic tarpaulin stretched over and secured to a parked scooter, fills up with wind. It looks as though someone is writhing about on the scooter, pretending to ride it at great speed and leaning from side to side as he or she negotiates imaginary bends in an imaginary road.

In a gift shop shop, which is closing down, I find a book called Garden Wildlife published by the Wildlife Trust which has pictures of the slugs and snails, worms and centepedes, insects and spiders as well as the birds, reptiles and mammals, which visit our gardens. It will be useful to be able to give a name to a great grey slug, green shield bug or a two-tailed bristletail when next I meet one.

In Hall's bookshop I pick up a copy of that nasty French, eighteenth century novel called Les Liasons Dangereuses. The previous owner has pencilled on the fly leaf a quotation from Alfred de Musset, which clearly marks his disapproval: "Livre qui est plus dangereux que les liasons dont il parle."

Traffic lights, Wuthering Heights, black bag

From the inside of Barclays Bank, which is at a higher level than the street, I see, framed in the window, three metal cylinders one above the other like primitive rocket launchers. They are traffic lights sideways on and at eye level.

In Oxfam book shop there is a copy of Wuthering Heights. It is in French and has become Les Hauts de Hurle-Vent.

A new, black liner has been clipped into one of Tunbridge Wells's smart black litter bins. The wind has somehow got into the bag and it stands up vertically like a balloon trying to escape; it seems to swing from side to side with excitement or frustration.

Jumbo, desolate pigeon, backs of houses

The word, jumbo, no longer applies strictly to elephants - it was apparently the name of a particular, very large zoo elephant sold in 1882, and from that has come to mean anything large. But for me, it has always had an almost exclusive elephant meaning. The word sounds like an elephant. Jumbo jets, I can just accept: if an elephant became an airliner, that is what it would look like. But I still find it odd and amusing to see food producers and manufacturers use the term for such products as eggs and sausages. Today, I see in the supermarket a package of chicken legs described as "jumbo legs".

The 1930s cinema in the centre of Tunbridge Wells, together with a tawdry row of shops is to be pulled down next month. There is to be no new cinema on the site, which, particularly seen from the side, is one of complete, urban desolation. A passage behind the shop is scattered with layers of plastic rubbish, bottles, slates, broken bricks, soggy newspaper and carboard boxes and all the other horrible detritus that discarded buildings seem to attract. The only vegetation consists of the skeletons of dead, buddleias , which have tried and failed to get a life. The only living thing that I can see as I walk past is a sad pigeon sitting in a window embrasure: no pheonix, though maybe a hopeless substitute.

The backs of terrace houses, which you usually see from the front, tell a contrasting story. They are encumbered by a jumble of lean-tos and conservatories, and other excrescences which do not connect with the polite and conventional front-doors, ambitious steps, porches and curtained, bay-windows, on the other side. Looking across from the lower part of Little Mount Sion to the back of Warwick Park, as I walk up the hill from the High Street, it occurs to me that the backs of houses are like the inside of people's minds, not meant to be, and possibly better not, looked at.

Lemon tree, pigeons, bubbles

A lemon tree with fruit, which you don't expect to see here, even a very small one like this, is sitting in window box in Little Mount Sion.

Several pigeons are strutting and pecking on the grass in the Grove like chickens.

A child with one of those little wire hoops and a jar of special bubble liquid holds out the hoop and allows the wind to blow bubbles, which rise and float in the sun up into the branches of an oak tree before vanishing.

Pi, colour of days,crow

Today, I hear on Radio 4 that it is World pi day. Why? Apparently it's because today's date, in the American style, 3/14, is the closest in the calendar to the number represented by the Greek letter pi. The ratio of the diameter to the circumference of a circle is an irrational (can't be expressed by a fraction) and transcendental (can't be the solution to any algebraic equation with fractional coefficients) number. The decimals after the point go on for ever. Where's the pleasure. It ... "dost tease us out of thought as doth eternity."


Do you see days as having colours? I can't explain it, but here's how my days look in the spectrum:
Tuesday Green
Wednesday Blue
Thursday Pink - the shade of weathered roof tiles or very old claret
Friday Purple
Saturday Pearl gray
Sunday Black
Monday Yellow
Variations? Alternatives? I can't have plugged into a universal vision.

On the drooping, leading shoot of a Lawson cyprus in the Grove sits a carrion crow, the ruler of all it surveys. It says: "Cor, Cor." Let there be no dissension.

Office, vase, mouth

There is a pub in Goods Station Road called The Office.

In Carluccio's cafe, a deep, oblong vase on one of the tables contains courgettes stacked to the rim.

A girl at a cafe table is talking about rugby and describing with animation what happened in a game she was watching. Her mouth momentarily takes on the shape of a rugby ball.

Wood-smoke, tidying-up, lost and found

The smell of wood-smoke in the cold air.

An untidy person desperate to be tidy, I believe I have become tidy, if only because otherwise I would forget where I have put things. The satisfaction of packing things away in a chest, and then making a list of what is in the chest, is the triumph of the tidy side of me over the untidy side.

I find a book, which I have been looking for since yesterday. It is where it should have been on the shelf, and I was looking in all the places where it ought not to have been.

Peacock, unexpected sun, thumbs up

A red peacock with a long, trailing, pea-green tail, painted on a black, 19th century Chinese chest.

An unexpected and reluctant sunbeam pierces a thin drizzle and, shining through a passage, throws a square of light on to the wall of house in Bell View on the way into the Grove.

A solitary glove has been perched on one of the spikes of a fence. It sits on one of the spikes, giving an optimistic "thumbs up", to cheer a bleak day.

Ringed mum, plane catkins, joke

Sitting at a window table in Wagamama in Mount Pleasant, I see a woman behind a pushchair, a baby inside, a grown up child beside her. Almost every projecting part of her face - upper lip, lower lip, eyebrow, ear, nose, has several rings through it. Her children are unringed.

On a bench in Mount Pleasant, I look up to see the spherical clusters of last year's seeds on a plane tree hanging among bare branches.

A joke about jokes just about passes muster. An Englishman, a Scotsman, a Welshman and an Irishman go into a pub. The barman looks them up and down, and says: "Is this some kind of joke?"

Lay figures, dawn chorus, Grove symphony

Because I am usually asleep at that time, I do not usually hear the dawn chorus, but I caught it this morning with pleasure; it seemed as though it was still dark, but there must have been light in the eastern sky.

I have always been fascinated by lay figures in shop windows, particularly when they are off duty. The other day I saw a group of them clustered in one corner of a window in Hoopers department store, while window dressers were at work in the other. The figures turned in towards one another seemed to be in conversation with one another and a little embarrassed to be caught without their clothes.

On my way home through the Grove, I stand still for a moment and listen. That thrubbing engine sound is a helecopter passing overhead. In the house on the corner decorators are at work, and the sound from there seems to be one of those mechanical floor sanders, scouring away. In the distance there is the drone of at least one other aircraft. There are children's voices. You can just hear traffic in the High Street. And somewhere in the branches overhead a blackbird is singing.

Composition, left-overs, no enemies

Framed by the window of Zizi's restaurant, where we are sitting, I see a composition consisting of the following: a street sign showing a motorcycle flying over a car; a shop window with the name of the shop, Sahara, engraved on it; various dresses, arranged in the window like people watching the street; two shop assistants inside the shop; a fire-escape sign on the door of the shop, showing a man running away and a staircase; and outside the shop, a live policeman talking into a mobile phone.


I find a use for left over narrow strips of card from my Christmas card printing. They are folded over so as to clip over a page and become bookmarks each with a bird, insect or flower painted or drawn on it.


In W H Auden's commonplace book, A Certain World, I read this:

"Priest: Do you foregive your enemies?
A dying spaniard: I have no enemies. I have shot them all."

Auden doesn't say where he got it. Perhaps he made it up.

Five soggy dogs, soup sandwich, sounds of rain

Five soggy dogs of uncertain breed, but almost certainly related to one another, sit outside the newsagent in Grove Hill Road, waiting for their owners in the rain. They are black and white, with ears all over the place. When the owners, two men equipped now with bottles, come out of the shop they all make for the Grove, where the dogs go wild, racing and barking and chasing each other.

"It's a soup sandwich", is how Rich Armitage, Colin Powell's Deputy Secretary of State in Washington, describes the inter-departmental rivalry and turf wars in the White House, according to the former British Ambassador Christopher Meyer in his book, DC Confidential .

The sound of raindrops when it hasn't rained for some time.

hydranger ball, cup of tea, olives

A dry hydranger blossom, cut loose and curled into a loose ball, blows along the road as though it knows where it is going.

A cup of tea is a darling thing. When it is accompanied by a slice of cherry cake, it is just my cup of tea.

A bowl of big, fat, meaty olives. They are not supposed to taste as good as the smaller one, but there is a satisfaction in their generosity.

Light and senior, baby, joys of spring

On the check- out conveyor in the supermarket is a bag on which the only words I can read are "light and senior". To what they refer I shall never know because they are quickly whipped away by the purchaser.

Surmounting a pile of shopping in a supermarket trolley is a very small baby in a basket.

On the grass in the corner of the Grove in front of his house, which gives on to this little park, is Giles and his wife and one of their children. He puts his arm round his wife, waves and says: "The joys of spring: will this get me on to the web?"

By Royal Appointment, outdoor girl, looking up

The regency building in the Pantiles used to be the Royal Victoria and Sussex Hotel. The young Princess Victoria stayed there with her mother before she came to the throne. A massive royal coat of arms stands above the door. The building now incorpororates an indian restaurant. Sitting opposite in this morning's sunshine, I notice, not for the first time, and with a sneaking admiration, that the name of the restaurant, Masala, is majestically inscribed just beneath the coat of arms, which gives the restaurant a surprisingly elevated status, as though it is by royal appointment. Perhaps, the spirit of the former Empress of India presides.

Outside a cafe in the High Street this afternoon sits a woman with a woollen hat, a thick scarf and a heavy overcoat. She is dealing with a cup of coffee, but doesn't seem to be enjoying it, for the wind is getting up and the sun has gone.

I stand close under under a huge oak and look up as though I were a camera searching for an unusual angle, and the branches spread out from the thick, towering trunk in all directions, and take over the sky.

Talking starlings, robin returns, chitting

I recently learnt, when reading about them, that starlings were good mimics. So I am not too surprised when I read this morning in Marcel Pagnol's Le Chateau de ma Mere, the second volume of Souveniers d'enfance, set in the hills of Provence, the following exchange between him and his friend Lili on the question of starlings. Marcel is speaking:
"My uncle Jules has told me that you can tame them".
"Certainly you can. My brother had one of them, and it could speak, but it spoke only patois".
"I, on the other hand," I said, "will teach it French".
"Don't be too sure of it. These birds are country birds".

With Spring not far off, I collect some compost from the compost heap, and just as I notice the absence of a robin, ever present at the heap last year, there is a chirp and flutter, and here is one again. Is it my friened of last year? It was certainly quick to spot me and to make use of me as a turner-up of delicious bugs. I hope so.

I unpack seed potatoes and place them in egg boxes to encourage them to sprout as a prelude to planting. The process is called chitting.

book day, crocuses, nest-building

Today, I notice, is International Book Day. I wonder how many people in the world are aware of this.

Crocuses are pushing through dead leaves.

On the fence when I am feeding the wheelie bin, I see a female blackbird on the fence with a bouquet of twigs and grass in her bill.

Plastic bag, open is closed, diamond cuncher

A plastic bag blows across Christchurch Avenue, like the bag in American Beauty; it seems that the wind, which gently inflates it, as it sweeps it along in a dislocated dance, is breathing life into it.

In the cafe, I notice that the closed/open sign, which hangs on the inside of the door proclaiming that the cafe is open to those in the street and the rest of the world outside, being reversed for those inside, announces to them that the street and the rest of the world is closed.

Gail Rebuck, who is chairman and chief executive of the publishers Random House was, apparently, described in Private Eye as "crunching diamonds between her teeth".

Sowing tomatoes, blackbird, shining branches

Sowing two types of tomato in the greenhouse: one variety, a large one, of the sort which supermarkets call beefsteak, is yclept Brandywine; the other, which produces tresses of small tomato, is Loveheart(Cutie).

A blackbird attempts to pre-empt the Spring. Its thin, uncertain song, as it sits in a holly tree, is not convincing.

The sunlight glints on the damp, black branches of the trees in the Grove.

Bulbs, money gone, tar

Electric lights bulbs attached to plastic daffodils and suspended from long wires, and some smaller bulbs with daffodils attached to them and set in compost in plastic trays, form a pretty, visual pun in a fashion shop window display in the High Street.

The 1p and 2p pieces which, yesterday were scattered like petals on the pavement in Mount Sion, have vanished.

The clean, slightly intoxicating yet business-like smell of tar hangs over the Grove where the tarmacing proceeds.

Pennies from heaven, pub change, emotional blackmailer

Unusual litter on the corner of Mount Sion and Berkeley Road this morning consists of a substantial scattering of 1p and 2p pieces - about 50p altogether Heidi reckons. We encounter it at the beginning of our walk. It is still there on our return, apparently untouched.

Our local has a new landlord. The last one who lasted about a year kept the place clean and tidy. There were even flowers on the tables. All the regulars left. Now it's back to normal, scruffy and uncared for, and the regulars are back.

I am sorry not to have discovered Tristan Forward's weblog emotionalblackmailers.blogspot.com earlier. It has witty photographs and captions.

Weather talk, overhead organ, comedy act

There is something comforting about the ritual of talking about the weather.
"Cold wind!."
"Yes, Isn't it. Roll on the summer. Then we'll say: it's too hot."
"And too dry!"

The sound of someone playing the organ percolates from King Charles the Martyr. It is almost better when you catch it that way, mingled with traffic sounds, than sitting solemnly in a pew inside.

I like the suggestion from Charles Moore in this week's Spectator of a new comedy act in the style of Morcombe and Wise or Smith and Jones, called Chip and Pin.

Tarmac in the snow, plastic orchids, tidying up

In the Grove, yesterday, they began to lay the tarmac on the repaired footpaths amid frequent flurries of snow. In the poor light of the afternoon, the steam from the tar surrounded the workmen in their orange jackets; with their machinery in constant motion, it evoked a scene from Victorian industry, which would certainly have attracted the attention of J. W. Turner.

At first I thought it was some kind of fungus, but on closer inspection, the clump of greyish yellow matter, turned out to be a dust-covered, plastic orchid which someone had discarded.

The satisfaction of putting loose papers into plastic filing boxes and labelling the boxes.

Fine snow, looking up at snow, pearl barley

This morning: streaming, fine snow, only just snow, only just not rain.

This afternoon: proper, large, white snow flakes, which fall slowly and quietly and are inclined to float; and when you stand still and look up at them, appear to be grey in their ragged crowds.

Pearl barley prepared like a risotto with a rabbit broth and served with the legs and saddle of the rabbit, garnished with baby leeks and prunes.

Glory, Marcel Pagnol, thyme

I wake up with two words in my head - "glory" and the French equivalent gloire. I consider the two side by side. Glory seems to be something, which, in England, we are rather suspicious of. It's not the thing we admit to seeking, although when the glory is applied patriotically as in Hope and G, well that's another thing. The French, I suspect, have no hang-ups about gloire. I wonder if one reason why, is that a noble river mianders through the word, with ancient towns on its bank and many fine castles, famous wines from Pouilly Fume and Sancerre to Chinon and Bourgeil to Muscadet to be drunk with the seafood of the estuary. Meanwhile, lose the "l" from the English word, and you almost have "gore", which is dispiriting.

Sometimes, books which you are looking for turn up just when you want them in a charity shop. I have been reading Marcel Pagnol's overwhelmingly beautiful and funny autobiographical works contained in Souvenirs d'enfance, and had ordered DVDs of the films which had been made of the books. Today the DVDs arrive in the post, and in the Mind shop in the High Street, I find the two volumes of the work in English.

The smell of thyme in the wet garden , when I cut it to flavour the rabbit for tonight's supper.

Catkins in the rain, children, good story

Hazel catkins hang like slanting rain and, in the rain, look even more like rain.

In the train, a group of four- and five-year-old children, on an outing, sound like a flock of birds; no separate words are distinguishable.

"What people are ashamed of, " said Scott Fitzgerald, " usually makes a good story."

Icy wind, new word, two cats

An icy wind bites the ears: a good day for one of the long, wide, woollen scarfs that Heidi knitted for me.

I rather like the French word prechi-precha (there is a circumflex accent over each "e", but I haven't found out how to do it here) meaning "boring repetition".

In Chapel Place, a black cat with white forepaws winds its way round one of those stylised Chinese, stone lions, outside the shop selling asian furniture.

Pocket soup, pigeon sounds, open mind

My eyesight, says the optician, is alright. But sometime I misread signs with curious results. In the supermarket I see a sign which seems to announce "pocket soups", a surreal idea, which appeals to my intellect and even to my gastronomic preference, more than packet soups.

In the early morning the sounds of pigeons cooing greets me. They live in the line of leylandii which grow at the side of the vegetable garden, unloved and unwanted by me. It is a gentle soothing sound, but reminds me that I must attend to the netting and fleece, which I have spread over the purple sprouting broccoli, because there is nothing that pigeons like more than this vegetable, as soon as the heads appear in the Spring.

"I believe," says the novelist Nina Bawden in a feature called Credo in today's Independent on Sunday, "in keeping an open mind, in standing up for the weak, in being polite and kind to people, but not being too kind to people who don't deserve it, in considering that other people are as important as you are."

Jaguar, blackbirds, children

A woman manouvres a sleek Jaguar down Little Mount Sion. The registration begins with SHY.

For the first time this year, two blackbirds sing their full-throated song (as distinct from the repeated warning cry, which we have heard through the winter).

In Morrisons there is a woman with four children, who seem to be between the ages of two and six. When all are altogether, you are aware that if you lined them up the angle of incline, from the smallest to the largest, would be about 35 degrees.

Thunder, green haze, shadow

Just awake and shortly to get out of bed, I hear a great clap of thunder. That's all. There is no storm before or after, just a shower of rain.

Do I imagine it or is there a green haze over the trees on the common seen from the slopes of Mount Sion? It could be the earliest buds on the trees, or the reflection of the sun shining on the verdigris, which covers the branches.

My shadow moves ahead of me as I walk up the High Street. Where is it taking me?

Baby leeks, hosepipe, confusion

In the vegetable garden are some baby leeks, planted later than they should have been, and growing in a row like spring onions, rather than having been transplanted in the normal way. I lift a bunch of them and braise them in olive oil and lemon juice, seasoned with paprika: leeks a la greque.

A neighbour has buried strips of green hosepipe in his front garden leaving lengths of it exposed. The intention is to deter cats, from crapping there, on the assumption that they mistake the hosepipe for a snake. He says it works.

"Confusion was immediately restored" is an expression which was, according to John Murray's commonplace book, in common use during the second world war.

Hunting horn, dust, giving up

I have become addicted to Marcel's Pagnol's Childhood Memories, both the films and the books.
In the first book in the series, My Father's Glory, he is describing his fathers passion for bric a brac, and his mother's reaction to some of his more eccentric purchases. When his mother describes, as a waste of money, his outlay of three francs on a old hunting horn, his father replies: "Think for a moment: I can saw off the bell, and I have an ear-trumpet, a loud hailer, a funnel; the rest of the horn, if unscrewed, becomes the spiraling tube of an alembic. I can reshape it as a pea-shooter, or a water pipe, and one of copper, please note. If I saw it into thin slices, you have twenty dozen curtain rings; and if I pierce it with a hundred holes, you have a shower-head; and if I modify it with the help of an enema-douche, you have a popgun". That is exactly how I feel about bric a brac; and, incidently, some items of packaging, which always strike me as having numerous alternative uses.

I offer the vacuum cleaner a pile of dust, which some stacked canvasses have been hiding. It eats it up like a greedy dog gobbles a plate of liver.

A neighbour tells me he gave up smoking two weeks ago. "It's like losing a lover," he says. "I've nothing to live for." Then he adds; "I've still got my gum," chewing it manfully.

Bleak House, two cats, shoots

It's been a long, difficult read, but an enjoyable one in the end. I am on the last few pages of Bleak House. The plot is complicated and the cast of characters enormous; what is impressive is the way the connections between all the characters are made, logically and in good time. If I had watched the adaptation on tv, good as I understand it was, I would never have finished the book.

In the vegetable garden I note that there are now two cats who visit - the tortoiseshell kitten from last year, now a teenager, has been joined by (I presume) a relative who shares the colouring though is more orange than tortoisehell. Robins and blackbirds are not yet in evidence, but I hope that the bells worn by both cats will prevent any thuggery the cats have in mind. Tortoiseshell poses opposite me one paw slightly raised as though to tell me to mind my own business.

In the pots at home, tulips and daffodils, and in the vegetable garden, garlic and welsh onions are sending forth green shoots.

Camden Road, celeriac, heart in the sky

Camden Road is quite different from the rest of Tunbridge Wells. There are no smart cafes, no branches of restaurant or fashion chains, no boutiques. Instead there are little shops selling items of junk which don't pretend to be antiques; charity shops; specialist shops selling electronic bits and pieces; take-aways, emitting spicey odours; tattoo parlours; a homeopathy and meditation centre; and a mosque. Walking down Camden Road is a bit like being on holiday.

A pleasure anticipated is an enormous celeriac root waiting to be turned into juice or a puree or to be cut into cubes and roasted or mashed.

Above the busy shopping street, one of those bright red, gas-filled balloons in the shape of heart, has escaped and blows around against the grey sky.

Composition, silver shard, peacock's feet

I like the way birds and animals seem to arrange themselves as though composing a picture for the viewer. This morning, as I raise the blind, two pigeons on the roof opposite compete for one chimney pot, then agree to one each, as the weaker settles on the adjacent pot on the stack. Later, on the station platform, the shadow of the bridge that crosses the railway and the platform shows up black against the brightly lit tarmac beyond. On the edge of the shadow a pigeon, silhouetted, pauses in mid-strut.

As he train leaves Tunbridge on its way to London there is a gravel pit, become a small lake or a large pond. It is bordered by water meadow and frequented by Canada geese, ducks and other wild fowl. Here, even practised commuters raise their eyes from their reading matter, to view the scene. As the train distances itself from it, this bright morning, the expanse of water, from being a mirror, is seen only as a silver shard in the landscape.

Alan Bennett again. "Speaking of a peacock, " he writes in Untold Stories ..."its flesh is not supposed to decay, a symbol of immortality and resurrection. Less well known is the fact that it was supposed to scream at the sight of its own feet, not recognising them as its own - a predicament which one sympathises with more and more as one gets older."

Sausages and lentils, wagtail, soap

Giuseppi, from whom we buy some chunky Italian sausages, presents us with the hock end of a parma ham. To go with the sausages, we braise Puy lentils, flavoured with finely chopped and sauted shallots , a clove of garlic and a touch of chopped chilli, in some left over chicken stock. We add the hock to the lentils, grill the sausages, and unite the two parts of this simple dish on a serving plate, the lentils made unctious with a little of the fat from the sausages.

I love the swooping flight of the wagtail. If I were a bird that is how I would fly.

In a restaurants gents, I note one of those plastic bottles with a spout and a handle to pump liquid soap onto your hand. The label describes the soap as "white cranberry and coconut".

Gilding, window cleaning, sarnie

After last night's rain, the morning sun gilds the branches of trees, evergreen leaves and even the black paintwork of railings.

The cafe owner prompted by the sun, which shows up the dirt, spreads soap and water over the window making a lace-like pattern. Watched from the inside his shadow, wielding the squeegie, dances for a moment before clearing the soap with broad sweeps, and becomes the man again.

In the cafe I hear: " A bacon sandwich on brown bread with brown sauce". Not my cup of tea, quite. But the words have a ring about them, which are for ever England.

Woodpecker, camelia, loaves

There are no woodpeckers in this corner of Tunbridge Wells, but an old friend emails me to say that one has arrived in his Hampstead garden,
"and at around 9 o'clock begins rata rata rata, a dull but pleasant sound that tells us there is still hope and to get on with the the day. But every time we hear him (why do we always say him?) I think of you and know that you would mention him..."
Well, Tom, now I have. My bird book tells me, incidently, that yours is almost certainly a great spotted, rather than (the rarer) lesser spotted woodpecker. It says that in recent years great spotted woodpeckers have spread to central London parks and in some districts even visit garden bird tables. It could also be a green wood pecker.

The two buds of the Camelia that began to open when it was still January, their green sheaths become a gentle pink, have now, like a drama unfolding, become flowers, braving the February wind.

The sight and smell, and subsequently the taste of two golden, freshly baked loaves, standing on a rack to cool off.

Nothing to pay, seen sideways, make it simple

Receiving a bill, or rather a statement, which tells you there is nothing to pay on your account.

Alan Bennett, writing about some of his favourite paintings, quotes E. M. Forster: "Only what is seen sideways sinks deep".

For a long time I knew of a restaurant called A La Bonne Franquette. It was only the other day that I realized that the phrase meant "simple and without fuss", which is how food should be prepared. That was the belief of Escoffier, who famously advised, faites simple!

Trolley, No Entry, scallop pie

In Sainsbury, a full-sized trolley, stacked high with purchases moves towards me, apparently self-propelled. Then I see, pushing it, a very small boy, his arms stretched up to reach the handle. From in front, he is completely hidden by the contents of the trolley: inconspicuous consumption.

A No Entry sign used by the workmen in the Grove, has, after Saturday night's usual revelry, ended up, high among the branches of a tree - some sort of surrealist message warning high flyers.

Tonight, a pie made from scallops in a light sauce, surmounted by mashed potatoes. The scallops are sliced and placed, as yet uncooked in the dish, and covered with a Bechamel sauce. This is covered with mashed potatoes, glazed and put in the oven. By the time the potatoes begin to colour, the dish is ready, as the scallops require very little cooking.

A piece of cake, primula, googol

A slice of cherry cake and a nice cup of tea.

A primula in the front garden has bloomed; there are two meagre blossoms but they offer a pleasing contrast to the uniformly grey sky and cold, damp air.

With all this fuss about Google, I refresh my memory about the origin of the name. It is a mis- spelling of "googol" which describes the number 10 to the power of 100 ie 1 followed by 100 zeros.

Sitting still, connections, switches

In this cold weather, I have notice that pigeons sit perfectly still, like decoy pigeons, in the bare branches of trees. I am not sure whether it is because they are conserving energy, asleep, or too cold to do anything else.

In the last six months I have gained particular pleasure from three books - The Three Musketeers, The Woman who Walked in the Sea by Frederick Dard, and Bleak House. I have just begun a fourth called The Five Hundred Millions of the Begum by Jules Verne. There was no reason for the choice, other than a combination of chance and inclination. Yet there is an unexpected connection between the first two and the second two. The central character of the Woman who Walked in the Sea is known as Milady, a deliberate reference to a character in The Three Musketeers, also known as Mildady. In the Jules Verne story there is a reference, in a threatened legal confrontation, to Jarndyce v Jarndyce, the interminable case in chancery which is central to the plot of Bleak House.

There is a special pleasure in switches, some more than others. There is a small table lamp recently come into our house which has a simple, metal lever switch, comfortable to touch and with an immensely satisfying click.

Old men, spectacles, email from Africa

" Above all, old men are dangerous, who have only the memory of things past left them, and have lost the remembrance of their repitions." I read this in John Florio's contemporary translation of Montaigne's essay on liers, and take it to heart.

In the opticians waiting for a check up, I see five recesses, in each more than 100 spectacle frames - nearly six hundred in all; but they can't see me.

I was gladto have been included in Glare Grant's first email from Africa, where she speaks of the lions, and other wild animals she has seen in her first couple of days in Tanganyka. She it was, who started the idea of noting three items every day, which have given pleasure, and which I and others have taken up. I'll be following her adventures with pleasure and interest.