shipping forecast, conkers, lace

Though not a sailor, I love the BBC shipping forecast. The area names and the shorthand language are pleasing and somehow reassuring. Fair Isle, Viking, Cromarty, Forth,Tyne, Dogger, German Bite and so on. When I listen, now that I have a map, I follow the coastline in my mind, down the North Sea, through the English Channel up the Irish Sea and up the coast of Ireland until the Scottish Islands, Faroes and Iceland. Then there is the language: "Northwesterly 5 to 7. decreasing 5 or 6 later. Rough or very rough. Showers. moderate or good". Spoken in the measured tones of the announcer, it is far removed from the wind, rain and spray, but nevertheless is a gentle reminder of a wider world.

The green, spiked husks of conkers hang in bunches of two and three. They begin to take on a dunn colour.

Through the lower section of a sash window, the bottom part of a lace curtain waggles and waves.

old notebook, overcast, legs

I have just seen, and printed out to enjoy at lesisure Lucy Kempton's latest set of photographs illustrating the Compasses poems (31 - 35). You will find the link on the right.

The interest which Marja-leena and others have shown in my notebook is flattering. I must have made it sound too interesting, even attractive. There is another, less acceptable side to it. It is, I am afraid, rather like a gross, untidy room. A good reflection of my mind. Unmatched socks lie under the bed; books, magazines and newspapers cover the floor in unsorted piles; forgotten cups nurse stains and the remains of tea and coffee; electronic cables leading nowhere strangle the sparse, collapsing furniture. Is that a half eaten sandwich? Is that a mouse nibbling at it? Better not draw the curtains. It would reveal too much, or too little, and nothing much to be proud of. But thank you Marja-lena for your suggestion, and, as ever, for you visit.

Overcast is the word to describe our weather recently. Under the sunless grey sky there is an aimless quality that you find in energetic children kicking their heels with nothing to occupy them. The trees wave their branches listlessly with a hint of petulence. The smothered sound of rock music emerges from a group of young people, waiting for something to happen.

Through a window, which I pass in the street, I see just a pair sandalled feet, and legs dressed in a pair of dark brown shorts.

last doctor, soldiers, notebook,

In the Pantiles we bump into an old mate, ( last encounter 10 years ago). We get to fill in in the gaps. He says that he had to sign on with a doctor, not for medical, but for administrative reasons. He could answer none of the questions which confronted him. He had had no reason to see a doctor in the last 40 years or more. He was fit. No, he didn't know his national insurance number. And yes, he did smoke 4o cigarettes a day, and he saw no reason to stop.

Thin slices of buttered toast called soldiers, which you dipped into your boiled egg were called soldiers, when I was a child. I dare say they still are. I wouldn't have known how to translate them into French, until this morning when I came across the word mouillette, which I guess is the correct transaltion, without the military metaphore.

I have come to the end of my notebook, which forms the often indecipherable source of this blog. Looking back through its pages I see a number of examples of received opinions inspired by Flaubert's Dictionary of Received Ideas. My favourite and, my own rather than Gustave's, is:
Old person: Anyone ten years older than you. Never speak to one unless you have to. Also: Foreign language: Spoken by foreigners when they don't want you to know what they are saying.
There are numerous drawings of, birds, dogs and the heads of people in pubs and restaurants. And folded into the pages are a number of winged seeds, bits of plants and yellow post-it notes, which I cannot read. Tomorrow, I new book begins.

old, grass, bus

A friend of Heidi's comes over for a meal. After several glasses of wine, she asks me when I was born. "1933", I say. "You're very old," she says.

The smell of cut grass is much quoted as a favourite thing. It is no less attractive for that, in the Grove, this afternoon, under an overcast sky.

An empty, red double-decker bus stands at the bus stop its forward door open, the driver's seat empty. Next to the door, printed in white letters is its name "Louise".

babies, tomboys, puppy

On a square of rugs arranged in the Grove, several mothers and small babies gather with push chairs and baskets full of nappies, bottles and other accesssories. The babies, all more or less the same age, are cuddled, loll on the rugs and are picked up and held in the air.

Two girls climb on to the branch of a tree parallel with the ground and practice hanging there upside down, there legs hooked over the branch. Tomboys, they used to be called. Is the term still used?

Giles who lives by the Grove has acquired a newfoundland puppy. I meet him standing by the main road, the dog folded in his arms like a big, black fur coat. Her name is Seal because, in her present state of infancy, she looks like one. She is eight weeks old. "I'm trying to get her used to the traffic," he says, as Seal looks nervously at the road with shy, black eyes. "She doesn't like it very much, especially lorries."

requiem, hibiscus, quiet

A tortoiseshell butterfly crash lands on the grass. We think it is dead. When we return, a wasp is eating its head and its wings are gently moving in time with the wasp's eager feeding. An hour or so later only the wings remain. Heidi places them on the garden table, where they lie, a brief memorial for a brief life.

Hibiscus, its flowers like crumpled tissue paper, and sultry girls on palm-fringed islands, with the flowers in their hair, go together. We have a fine hibiscus.

People walk by with quiet footsteps, on this heavy, overcast afternoon.

benches, admission, lemon grass

For a long time young people have been gathering under some trees in the centre of the Grove to chat among themselves. They made a little home there, removing benches from beside the paths were they were sometimes bolted down, and forming a comfortable square on the grass, like two sofas facing one another. Though some people regarded this re-arrangement as a liberty, something to be disgusted about, others looked quite kindly upon them. Now, in an act of imagination and thoughtfulness, the Council has placed some new benches, of a design better suited to the young, where they like to gather.

An admission from an old friend that he had visited this blog unknown to me and had even made a comment on a post, is a source of pleasure and surprise. A literary man, he signed his comment, Barrett Bonden, a pseudonym, which I should have, but didn't recognise. Who is Barrett Bonden? Jack Aubrey's bosun in the Aubrey Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brien. My friend tells me that he has read all 21 of the novels three times. I have read them only once, but that is a poor excuse for missing the reference. If I hadn't, while not identifying him, it would have told me that the visitor was an O'Brien fan, and that, in itself, would have been gratifying.

A lemon grass plant in a pot, apart from its culinary potential, looks good among other herbs and flowers in the garden.

drinking time, moth, shuffled

A sunny August Bank Holiday afternoon, and everyone is drinking; the smell of lager hangs over the Pantiles. Drinkers, pints in hand, stand around or sit on the wall or the steps. Children run and tumble at their feet. A group is pumping out rock from the stage at one end. The place has become a big, open air pub. People, usually taciturn or sullen, gradually taken over by alcohol are granted the gift of speech and wisdom. The sun blesses the flow of talk. A few years, perhaps 20 years ago, such a relaxed and merry scene would have not been thought possible in Tunbridge Wells.

In the garden for a moment I bend down to dead-head a marguerite and realise that, sitting on the spent flower that I am about to remove, is a very small brown butterfly with gold spots on its wings.

We bump into a couple of people I have known for years. Both, when I knew them before were married to different people. You would not have thought of them as a couple, or even as likely to have known one another. But, they seem be united now, very happily it seems, by a curious mechanism that, these days, seems to shuffle people like playing cards.

old smokers, climber, distant noise

A common sight now: smokers, mostly old people, often scruffy, gather outside pubs to puff. A circle of dog-ends surround their stamping grounds. Outsiders?

In the Pantiles, a great din this afternoon. Someone on the stage is playing a guitar supported by a bank of amplifiers. People lean back in the sun. Lager on the tables. The further away you are the better the music sounds - drifting background music, mingling with other sounds, part of the Bank Holiday atmosphere.

Some climbing clematis, which I planted against a climbing rose is clambering up the rose as I meant it to, but is only just now visible over the white abutilon and white hibiscus.

name change, euphemism, smokers

The pub in Grosvenor Road, which used to be called the Orson Wells, recently closed and has reopened as The Black Pig. It is setting out to be an altogether different sort of place - smarter you might say. No need to go into details, but a printed notice by the door gives some idea of its intentions, which seem to exclude me as a potential customer.

A Civilised Pub for Civilised
People, Over 21's(sic) only but
children welcome when
dining.
Good behaviour always
rewarded.
No louche or rude attitudes.
No bad language or scruffy
attire
The staff have the right
to refuse entry.
Thank you for playing along.

The Management


An old friend who was brought up on a farm in what is now the Czech Republic. She says that when she was a little girl she thought of the rabbits and sheep on the farm as her friends. When from time to time, they they were slaughtered and served up at table, her mother told her they had gone on a journey.

In the Gents at the Hotel du Vin in Tunbridge Wells, there are photographs of Sigmund Freud, Che Guevara, Winston Churchill, Groucho Marx and others. They are there because the hotel specialises in expensive cigars, which it sells from a special cigar bar; all were cigar smokers.
In the last few months, the hotel has erected a "cigar shack" , wide open at the sides, where patrons can smoke untroubled by the law.

mnemonic, leaf pool, bowling

My terrible memory drives me to invent all sort of strange mnemonics. Today, I look up for the third time the French word ourdir which means to warp as in weaving, but is often used to mean weave as in to weave or hatch a plot. How to imprint it on my memory and make it stay there? Ourdir, I say to myself, sounds a bit like the English exclamation "oh dear!" Well, if you can imagine someone with a Geordie accent saying "oh dear". That should fix it.



In the middle of an almost circular nasturtium leaf is a miniature pool, crystal clear. Radiating from its centre are the veins of the leaf. I count nine veins. Scattered over the leaf are tiny drops of water gathered in groups like galaxies. In the pool, I see reflected, in miniature, surrounding plants and trees, and myself.



As I pass a bus stop I hear a teen age girl say to another: "I'm going to doll myself up and everything."

disappointment, the haiku, parrot

In the car park outside Sainsbury's, I spot a stall on which I can read the words "roasted" and "free sample". Suddenly I have an overwhelming desire for a quick shot of espresso. I think to myself, here's a new brand of coffee being promoted. I walk up the stall, and as I see the qualifying word "Felix", a uniformed girl asks, "do you have a cat?

Five, seven and five,
In English from Japanese,
Fits like foot in sock.

In Chapel Place the other day, people were looking up and saying, "there's a parrot up there somewhere". You could hear it but not see it. It was the same yesterday and again today.

sorted, haiku, season

The second tranche of book sorting over, mostly art books and some cookery books, the shelves on the stairs up to the top floor studio, look accessible and tidy. The process reveals some interesting, forgotten possessions. The process of discarding is remarkably painless, almost a pleasure.

How the black road shines
When the rain has blown away,
Blinded by the sun.

This wet blustery afternoon people greet each other with the words: "It's August!"

misunderstanding, open mind, green

Into the charity bookshop comes a man with two plastic bags full of books. "I've brought these in", he says, showing the bags to the lady in charge. "Thank you very much," says the lady. "No, no", says the man. I have just bought them from the bookshop next door. I.. er just mentioned it, so that there wouldn't be any misunderstanding."



On a tv programme called Enemies of Reason, I hear and like: "An open mind is a good thing but not so wide open that everything falls out."



In the sodden a vegetable garden, I crunch a tender, raw runner bean. It tastes green.

sand paper, features, surplus

The sound of sand paper on wood in the open air, and the smell of the resulting dust. A park keeper is sanding a bench in the Grove preparing it for varnish.

Someone I pass in the street has a certain look about her which is familiar to me, though I don't think I know her. It strikes me that, sometimes, you recognise, in complete strangers, features or expressions, which belong to someone you know, or used to know. There have been times when, because of such resemblances, I have been on the point of greeting someone, whom I have never seen before.

Distributing vegetables fresh from the garden to neighbours, is the nicest way of dealing with surplus.

farouche, feet, machine

I have always like the word farouche in French, but not in English. In French, it evokes a particular sort of shyness, a feature of wildness, of the savage and untamed. I imagine as farouche, the young, both animal and human, beautiful and reluctant to engage with those who come too near. I see lowered eyes, a turning body, which bounds into the undergrowth. But this sense of farouche does not fit the English word which is spelled the same. "Sullen, shy and repellent in manner", says the Oxford Dictionary (first sighting 1765), which acknowledges its French origin; but the wild element has been lost, and this is confirmed by the way the adopted English word has since been used. Chambers English Dictionary confirms the distinction. It defines the English word as: shy or ill at ease; sullen and unsociable; socially inexperienced and lacking in polish. But it nicely acknowledges that the French word, from which it is taken, means: wild, shy savage.

Passing the window of house I see a pair of bare feet pointing into the air.

There is something pleasing about the sound of some machines. In Salisbury's this morning a lift truck loaded with pallets of fruit and vegetables, goes "ooer ... ooer... ooer", a gentle, high pitched hum.

stress, bag, quinces

Nearly everything in the vegetable garden. including lettuces, has been slow to fill out and mature this summer. Today, in the Financial Times Magazine I find an explanation. Apparently, according to a research centre in Flanders, a pair of enzymes called kinases act when conditions deteriorate, to turn on a network of genes to create a kind of "unforced hibernation conserving energy at the expense of growth." Unhelpful, but otherwise reassuring..

In the park called Calverley Grounds, there is a disused bowling green. It has been kept mowed, but is otherwise uncared for. Today, it is deserted but for a Tesco plastic bag resting in the middle. As I draw level, the bag swells with the wind and rolls from side to side. It seems to be alive, the handles stand out like ears. It stirs and rolls like someone waking up. Suddenly, it fills with wind and flies up in the air like a kite. It rises and rises like a kite, as though an invisible person is tugging, against the wind, at an invisible string attached to it. Then, as kites do, it sinks to the ground, admitting defeat. There is still a little wind and the bag gapes open as though breathless after its exercise. A little more wind, and it tumble slowly over and over until it reaches a more sheltered part of the green, where it seems to expire. I wait and watch hoping for more action, but, for a time at least, it has played its part upon its improvised set.

Quinces I love. At this time of year we begin to run out of the quince jelly I try to make every Autumn. A reminder came in book on plants and trees introduced over the years into the British Isles. No precise source for the following is given except that it comes from a poem of the Arabic world of the 10th Century"
".. it is yellow in colour as if it wore a daffodil tunic, and it smells like musk. It has the perfume of a loved woman and the same hardness of heart."

Explorers

The latest set of Lucy Kempton's photographs illustrating the Handbook for Explorers series of poems has been posted on http://www.lucyandjoe-compasses.blogspot.com/

cat bits, drift, squirrels

A van with the words Cat Components has a logo of running cats in profile. Intriguing until you look more closely and read the word: Cat Components for the distribution of car components.

On a still afternoon like this, music drifting out of a bar is seductive. The words "Strangers in the night...." float over passers by.

In the Grove three very small, very young squirrels tumble over one another, bite and square up and clamber up the thick trunk of a tree with difficulty. On an overhanging branch, they play follow my leader.

gone, creator, two pennies

Cherry laurels are not, in my opinion, the loveliest of trees. They are nowhere near as attractive as the bay tree, Laurus nobilis, with its delicate, aromatic leaves and more modest habit. So I am pleased that they have cut down the cherry laurel on the corner of Mount Sion and Berkeley Road. It is still a pleasant surprise when you walk past, to see the sky and sense the light.

I feed the name of a neighbour into the memory of my mobile phone. The task complete, the screen reads simply and flatteringly: "Smith created".

"If you have two pennies, spend one on a loaf and one on a flower. The bread will give you life; the flower, a reason for living." Chinese proverb.

potting, wild, twisted nose

"I learned it in England, where indeed they are most potent in potting. Your Dane, your German and your swag-bellied Hollander - drink, ho! - are nothing to your English." Iago to Casio in Othello, referring to a drinking song. Nothing new there. The remark would have gone down well with Shakepeare's audience, as it would with a contemporary English audience.

The lingering taste, and the thought, of wild ginger after a Thai meal in Sevenoaks this lunch time.

A charming book about the names of flowers tells me among other things that nasturtium comes from the latin nasus, nose, and tortus, twisted, because the pungent smell makes the nose wrinkle or twist. I prefer the French word for nasturtium, capucine, which refers to the shape of the flower, similar to a monk's hood.

word trail, false autumn, crows

Much as I love reading French, I am not a good or natural linguist. I get into tangles and follow strange dictionary trails. This morning I encounter the French word mousson. I confuse it with moisson, harvest. So what does mousson mean? Monsoon. This leads me somehow to recall the word mousse, moss , froth, foam, and so the familiar (in English,) mousse as in chocolate mousse. I end up reassuring myself about moite, meaning sticky, damp; and finally, just to make sure, moitié, meaning half - the end of a curious trail.

People are complaining again that the weather - we're not yet half way through August - is autumnal. Today the autumnal effect is enhanced by what looks like drifts of dead leaves in the Pantiles, but they are not leaves, rather the dry and sear, winged seeds of the lime trees, which form a walk at one end. At one point a street cleaner has swept them into a small heap for removal.

Four crows waddle on the grass in the Grove, in today's rain, almost without people; they peck at the sodden earth.

relief, going off, blown

Learning that the bank card which I thought I may have lost has been found and is being kept safely for me by the supermarket where I left it.

One elderly lady to another in Chapel Place: "She always goes off ...wherever you are ... in the middle of the night."

Lots of things are blowing about in the wind: leaves, paper, feathers, thistledown. And there's a butterfly. Is it blown or is it flying?

quiet, sunflower, shower

People are on holiday. It is Sunday, but the Grove looks foresaken. Even the play ground is quiet. It is a pleasing quietness, only slightly on the malancholy side.

In damp and chilly July, the sunflowers which I had planted in May had a hard time. They grew, but they were weak and thin. They are normally sturdy plants with thick stems. But I had to prop some up with stakes to stop them collapsing. Today, with the warm weather, they look altogether happier. And one, has flowered. It is the reddish brown variety, with golden pollen on its black face, amid a halo of yellow-streaked petals.

A proper old fashioned shower. Outside the Compasses, one moment the sun is shining, the next big drops are falling on the table ...
"... and Noah said to his wife, as they sat down to dine/ Never mind where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine"...
Big drops fall. We walk home not hurrying, not minding the rain, which isn't going to last for long.

expression, bookish, dancing light

A black plastic refuse-bag awaits removal at the edge of a garden. Some dead weeds pushing through a rent in the bag suggest a chin and untidy grey beard. Stretch marks in the plastic lead towards the tear. Here is an expression, you feel, but one without a face. Where the bag has been tied at the top there is the appearance of ears. But there is nothing to suggest eyes or a mouth - features, which we are supposed to look for in abstractions, to find a human element.

"No," says a father to a small boy in a stationers shop, which also sells books, "you've got lots of books at home."

Patches of light, reflected by the CDs suspended from string to deter pigeons, dance across the ground, over the vegetables, up the climbing beans.

vicarious walk, fritata, think before speaking

There is an elderly gentleman ( he must be older than I, or I would not think of him as elderly) whom I see sometimes in Tunbridge Wells. He has white hair, a bushy, white moustache, and rings under his eyes. He is always well dressed and has a military bearing. He has just acquired a walking stick and carries a satchel over his shoulder. On my way out this afternoon, I pass him going in a different direction. Later, on my return, I see him resting on a bench in Calverley Park, I sense that he is going in the same direction as I. I find myself wondering whether he, too, is bound for the cafe, and worry about how he will negotiate the very steep steps down to the path that leads to the cafe. I find that, in a way, I am walking with him and wonder what is going on his head. While I sip my tea, I notice that he has taken the easier path that does not lead to the cafe. I watch him as he follows the path at the top of the slope opposite the cafe, note that he sits on a bench there for a second rest. It has been a long walk. When I next look, he has walked on. I try to picture him getting home and making himself a cup of tea slowly and precisely. Because I always see him by himself, I imagine that he lives on his own. I follow him into a sitting room where he picks up a book on military history, and sinks into an easy chair ...

A fritata, made with chard, the liquid squeezed out of the boiled leaves, the stems chopped and cooked separately and for a longer time. The slow-cooked cake-like omelet, with its marbled surface, looks as good as it tastes.

A French phrase which appeals is tourner sept fois sa langue dans sa bouche, to rotate one's tongue seven times in one's mouth, to think before you speak.

gaudy, conflict, footsteps

Mediterranean culture is encroaching on England. When I was young, courgettes (or zucchini), green and red peppers, aubergines, basil and other food from Mediterranean countries were strangers to green grocers shops. Now they are as common as spuds. I thought this today as I admired the bright yellow trumpets of the courgette flowers in the garden, and remembered Robert Browning's slighting reference to this "gaudy melon flower" when homesick for England.

In the Grove, a small child walks along one path, his parents another. The child looks round to see if his parents are following. He begins to cry noisily when he sees that they are not following, though they are keeping an eye on him. The reason for the conflict? He wants to go to the playground. The parents do not. I walk on, and turn round to see what has happened. The child has won and the parents are following him into the playground.

The sound of footsteps on gravel is pleasing - restrained, yet firm and assured.

kind rain, contrast, thistledown

Congenial of the rain to fall last night. This morning the leaves are wet, the earth refreshed, and ready for sowing spinach in the sun.

In the park, the Royal Tunbridge Wells Croquet club is next door to a basket ball court. On the perfectly kept grass, old folk in straw hats, flannel trousers, long skirts are leaning over mallets and whacking coloured, wooden balls. On bare, grey tarmac, the young, in jeans and tee shirts dance in front of a pole where they try, not always successfully, to lob the ball into the net at the top of it.

Over a cup of tea I watch a piece of thistle down drift steadily across Calverley Grounds. It keeps a steady pace and the same height above the ground until it comes to the slope on the north side of the park, where it rises on a thermal or follows an upward movement of the breeze.

how, blue, thinking

How do I know that it is the same pigeon? (See yesterday's post and the question it raises). A good question, which I ask myself . There are a variety of possible answers.
1 It has a distinctive two-tone wing squeak, which another pigeon could not mistake.
11 It writes in its blog that it regularly meets the same old fool of a man in the same place (ie the corner of Mount Sion and Berkeley Road) Coincidence?
iii I always meet it (or another pigeon) flying at the same height, level with my head, in the same direction. If I look quickly enough, it winks at me in a familiar way.

Big white clouds today and in between deep patches of blue. Azure is not a word I would normally use, considering it the preserve of Romantic poets. But today the sky behind the clouds is azure.

When I wake up early in the morning I tend to think. If you can call it thinking. But in reality my mind just goes round in circles chewing up and regurgitating the same thoughts. I think: Real thinking is like climbing a rock face. You search for footholds and hand holds. You pull yourself up, with strength and confidence. You achieve a firm and steady rhythm. At the top you know where you are and where you have been. And even where you have yet to go.

blue beans, no panic, squeaking

The first of the blue, climbing beans called Blauhilde look spectacular next to the more usual yellow variety.

The tuneless singer is addressing passers by in Chapel Place. He wears a bowler hat pulled down over his head today. Last time I saw him it was a black, conical wizard's hat. He makes up the words as he goes along. Most people ignore him with a faint smile, but some schoolboys with skateboards, mock him. He hurries off, chanting : "there's no need to panic, no need to panic.

A pigeon passes me at eye level, as I walk along Berkeley Road in the direction of Mount Sion. It must be a regular flight path, because this is not by any means the first time we have met. Its wing squeak as though in need of lubrication.

Shostakovich, wasps and bees, beautiful words

Last night at the Proms, the National Youth Orchestra conducted by Mark Elder performs Shostakovitch's Seventh "Leningrad" Symphony. I watch it on TV and listen with fascination and enjoyment as the conductor and young musicians concentrate on something outside themselves, yet driven by skills and understanding, which come from within. The structure and intelligence of the music kept making me want to know what was going to happen next. At the start of every movement, the conductor seemed gently to caress and mould the air in front of him as though something tangible yet fragile and invisible, was there.

On the radio someone refers to a schoolboy joke: what bees are to honey, wasps are to Marmite.

According to Henry James the two most beautiful words in the English language are "summer" and "afternoon". That applies this afternoon in the Grove, where pools of shade lie in the grass, and groups picnic under the trees. Conversation is gently, lazy; cries are muted and laughter moderate like softly splashing water.

Goldilocks, salad day, watering

Whenever we have porridge for breakfast, which is most days, I think of Goldilocks and the three bears. If there is one thing I don't like, it is cold porridge. So I ask myself what sort of condition the porridge, which Goldilocks found in the cottage in the woods, was in when she came upon it? What did the bears expect on their return from their walk, if it wasn't cold porridge? How, in the circumstances, could they have abandoned their cottage for long enough to allow Goldilocks, to enter, try the three bowls of porridge, consume one of them, test out three chairs, go up stairs and try three different beds before falling asleep in the smallest one?
It must be this question or a similar one, which leads to the so called Goldilocks Enigma. This is the subject of a book of that name by Paul Davis, which examines how conditions on earth could be so precariously and miraculously balanced, as to permit the existence of life - a phenomenon, according to physicists, hugely against the odds.

A salad of lightly grilled or sauteed vegetables - courgettes, aubergines, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions etc - dressed with a light lemony mayonnaise on which fresh mint leaves are scattered, is worth preparing again.

What joy to be watering flowers and herbs in pots in the late afternoon sun, after so many days of rain, have made the chore redundant!

chance read, gypsy music, please,

A book picked up by chance. I read the first page and have had difficulty in putting it down. Someone must have left it behind when visiting, because I don't remember acquiring it myself. It is Un barrage contre le Pacifique by Marguerite Duras. A serendipitous read.

In Calverley Road shopping precinct, a gypsy guitarist plays. Standing beside him a barefoot dark haired girl in as black dress performs a few rhythmic steps, not quite flamenco. Outside a coffee shop, a young woman cradles her baby and pats its back in time with the music.

A child says to her mother: "I want a drink".
" Say, may I have a drink please, Mummy", says the mother, holding the drink out of the child's reach. " She pronounces the word Mummy in a staccato way with emphasis equally on both syllables. "May I have a drink please, Mum-my," says the child mimicking perfectly her mother's way of saying Mum-my." There is a note of long-suffering and a quiver of resentment in her voice. It is the resentment which comes from an innate sense of superiority. She must be four or thereabouts. What will she be like at 14?

helicopter, policeman's helmet, no photocopier

For the sake of an accurate description, I have just weighed my new helicopter. It weighs 10 grams or 1/4 oz. The fuselage is made of expanded polystyrene, the rotors and tail propeller of plastic. It is powered by a tiny motor beneath the rotors, which gets its power from an external battery-powered charger. You plug the charger into the helicopter via a lead. You operate the helicopter by remote, wireless control from the charger. It requires some skill to fly it (it has to be indoors, unless it is very still outside). But I am getting better at it every day. So far it has proved remarkably robust having hit the ceiling on a number of occasions and plummeted to the ground, when I took my finger off the throttle.

We sit on the terrace outside the Spotted Dog at Speldhurst and feast on haddock and chips. The beer-batter, in which the fish is clothed is light, crisp and transparent. It deserves and gets a couple of pints of Larkins bitter, brewed at Chiddingstone, down the road, to accompany it. I've been going to this pub for 40 years or more. It was famous for its views over the weald. Then a malign neighbour who owned the field beneath the terrace, planted trees which soon obscured the view. Now a gap has been made in the trees, and the view is partially restored. Under the wall beside the terrace, policeman's helmet or Indian balsam, is flourishing. It grows profusely in these parts, especially on river banks. We watch the bees popping in and out of the purple flowers, in forward, and out backwards.

I read this morning in Coleridge's Biographia Literaria how, when at school, he copied out the sonnets of William Bowles in order to share his enthusiasm for them with his friends. "As my school finances did not permit me to purchase copies," he writes, "I made, within less than a year and half, more than 40 transcriptions, as the best present I could offer to those, who had in any way won my regard." I thought to myself: No telephone, no typewriter, no word-processor, no computer, no photocopier! I love Coleridge all the more for this.

courgettes, drinker, fines herbes

Late but welcome are the baby courgettes, which I am cutting, the fruit no longer than the flowers, both fruit and flowers sliced finely for a salad or quickly jumped about in the frying pan.


On the blue plastic cover of the swimming pool, which I pass on my way to the vegetable garden, stands a pigeon, its feet in a puddle left by the rain of a couple of days ago. As I watch, it bows its head and ups its tail to drink from the same puddle, repeatedly and with apparent enthusiasm.

Chervil and chives share a pot in the garden where we sit. Every couple of weeks, I cut both to make an omelette aux fines herbes. Had they been visiting, Sherlock Holmes might have observed today: "You will note, Watson, that they have not eaten an omelette aux fines herbes in this house in the past two weeks."

house martins, basket ball, warmth

The next installment of Lucy Kempton' photographic account of Handbook for Explorers is complete, and may be found on www.compasses-lucyandjoe.blogspot.com/

The house martins fledge, There is a whirl of wings, and the swooping and wheeling birds are everywhere. Amazing to see them fly free from the tiny nest that once contained them and their endless calls for food. How many are there? Difficult to tell, because the parents still seem to be around. Three, or perhaps four. As part of the celebrations, they fly to the nest, hover outside it, or against the soffit under which it hangs, and they're off again.

On the pavement outside the house is a basket ball net and post, and the base into the pole fits. On the base is a label which reads: "I'm free. Please take me home with you."

During recent chill, rainy days, the vegetable garden, never an unfriendly place, has not been at its best. But this morning, in the warm sunshine, the lettuces and beans, which have been holding back, suddenly seem to revive; and so do I.

good news, meeting, sparrow hawk

Although it had never occured to me to support the Iraq national football team, I couldn't help feeling cheered that the team composed of Shias, Sunnis and Kurds, should have won their Asian cup final match. A light of hope and reconcilliation among so many stories of hatred and murder.

In Chapel Place I meet the elderly gent who goes to Hall's bookshop every Monday for a cup of tea. He is looking a bit frail, as he has been of late, but remarking on the fine day, the first for weeks, he says: "To use an old fashioned phrase, I feel buoyed up!"

Some weeks ago I saw what I thought was a bird of prey circling high over Tunbridge Wells. Now a neighbour tells me that a sparrow hawk was seen yesterday in the garden of his terrace house. Apparently it made off with a small bird in its tallons.

spices, aimant, house martins

Putting together the spices and other ingredients for a cous cous is like making a painting.

A French word threw me today. Aimant. Surely that means lover. But that's amant. So what is aimant? A magnet, of course. And when you think about lovers, because of its association with aimer, to love, it is not inappropriate. Neat really: magnets and iron and steel are attracted to one another like lovers to each other.

House martins have been nesting in the eves of the house opposite. The sound of the young calling for their parents and the sight of them responding, keeps us entertained.

poppy pod, lobelia, chard

I photograph, in close-up, the fruit of a large, white poppy that has shed its petals. It is a little sinister.The greenish hemisphere of the ovary is divided into 12 equal sectors by the dark brown ridges of the stigmas, like miniature hedges radiating from a central node. It's like a bomb containing seeds and, though it's not that sort of poppy, it could be; and would then contain the white juicy substance, the basis of opium, heroin, the lot. It could be a symbol or a logo, standing for something at the same time beautiful and ugly, perhaps planet Earth and its inhabitants.

In the WI Market I buy a tall lobelia, with dark almost purple leaves and scarlet flowers. It now sits in a flower bed by the front door next to a delicate, grey-leaved fuschia.

For a dish planned for tomorrow's guests, I cut big, shiny leaves of ruby chard (bright red stems and red veins in the leaves) and even bigger, green leaves of white stemmed chard. In separate jugs, they look magnificient and bend and twist in the light. They, like the poppy, will pose for photographs. But how different they are!

leeks, idle moments, singing man

I am planting leeks. I make a hole for each plant with a dibber and drop the plant it. Along comes the pretty, ginger and white cat. It says hallo, and sticks it paw into the hole, which I have just made, tests its depth and wanders off.

I think this afternoon: in the two years and a bit during which I have been posting this blog, there have been no boring moments. Waiting for a person or a bus or train is no longer tedious. There is always the sense that something is happening, or going to happen, which will be worth noting.

I have mentioned the youngish man who walks through the town singing tuneless songs aloud, and sometimes executing a little dance. Typically, he chants the words "I'm a naughty boy, I'm a naughty boy" . He usually wears an old bowler hat, but today he has a black, conical wizzard's hat, presumably something relating to Harry Potter. People in the Grove, including the children take no notice of him. They are used to him.

lords and ladies, scallywag, unwanted

The berries of lords and ladies ripen , from green to bright red, in a corner of the garden.

In the last couple of days I have read the word, scallywag, twice in the same newspaper and, this morning, heard it again on the BBC. It seems originally to have been used in 19th Century America to describe a southerner who supported the Federal cause, and has come to be a general word for a scamp or scoundrel. I seem to remember some grown-ups calling me a scallywag when I was a small child. And I believe I was but I hadn't supported either side in the American Civil War.

In between the handles of a wheelie bin in the street outside a house someone has thrust a fresh bunch of chrysanthemums. An unwanted gift? Has someone said it with flowers and someone else said no thanks. Thereby hangs a tale.

runner beans, not worried, surprise

I pass a house, where runner beans are growing on the balcony. Their scarlet flowers nuzzle a TV dish.

An unseasonal, chill wind blows. Rain threatens. But I don't care.

In Chapel Place, I meet Heidi unexpectedly. A happy, warm feeling, as she takes my arm.

Anti-climb, bucket, silk

A high wall with an iron gate in the middle of it bears this notice:
"These premises are protected with non-drying anti-climb paint. Unauthorised entry will result in damage and contamination to you and your clothing. KEEP OUT."
I rub my finger against the painted brick. It leaves no stain.

One of my favourite tools in recent years is a plastic garden bucket. It is not at all like a conventional bucket; it has two handles, and is much wider. You can squeeze it to pour liquid or shake out earth or compost and, because of its width, it is ideal for collecting weeds and trimmings. Also, because it is so wide, in the last few days, it has collected a considerable amount of rain water, which I comfortably transfer to a watering can.

While Heidi is in a clothes shop, I notice some white roses in a vase in the window. Are they real? Surely not. But there appears to be water at the bottom of the vase. I ask the shop assistant. "Silk," she says. What about the water?" I ask. She picks up the vase, and tilts it. The water, too, is ersatz, some sort of transparent plastic.

The Three Graces

Princess

longing,swords,crow

Another word from Foyles Philavery, which keeps circling in my mind, is:
groak verb, to look or stare at lovingly, especially at someone who is eating. "A very uncommon word", writes the compiler, "which I was unable to find in any dictionary. This is an ancient art still widely and ably practiced by pet dogs everywhere."

I watch as a mother and two small boys cross on a zebra. Each of the boys has a plastic sword, with a bright, silver blade and a golden hilts. They wave the swords energetically and proceed along the pavement, looking for someone to fight.

In the Pantiles, where usually pigeons look for crumbs amid the feet of visitors, today, in the drizzle, a hefty crow waddles to and fro. He usually hops but occasionally flaps a lazy wing, to get from point to point. As crows often do, he gives the impression of owning the place.

dance, longing, blog

In the Hight Street, a couple are dancing to the sound of catchy music coming from an open, top floor window above the shops on the opposite side of the road.

An extract from a treasury of unusual words Foyle's Philavery, by Christopher Foyle appears in the Independent newpaper. It includes:
brool, noun. A deep low humming sound; a murmur as of a large crowd.
oniomania, noun. Compulsion to make purchases.
pilgerous, adjective. Covered in hair or down.
zaftig, adjective. 1 Full bosomed. 2 Having a full, shapely figure; buxom.

A response to something you have written, any response, is always pleasing. When it is a felicitous response, what bliss! I refer to Tristan Forward's comment in Compasses, where he writes: "Blogging seems a bit like casting out a message in a bottle to drift away for who knows how long, far beyond that "long white skyline".

stillness, clouds, counting Gormleys

Is there anywhere in the universe, I ask myself as I wake up this morning, that is absolutely still? No particle in motion, no matter perishing or burgeoning, no string vibrating, no star exploding, no bubble bursting? No source of energy lying low, undreamed of, or revving up? Probably not, I tell myself. But would anybody know? Does anybody know?

Coming into London on the Hastings train, we watch the sky laden with cumulus, spread out over a new city: Canary Wharf, the Dome, the Gherkin, countless, tall, glass buildings and more go up. Round them, cranes cluster like curious birds, ( like the cranes after which they are named).

Anthony Gormley's life sized sculptures, moulded from his own body, are becoming familiar sights. We have seen them looking out to sea on Blackpool beach, and now a large number of them stand in prominent places on rooftops in the city and on either side of the Thames. From the new bridge, which connects Charing Cross station with the south bank, we look towards the City, and see who can spot the most Gormleys. We count eight (or is it nine?) from where we stand.

rain, growth, flow

This morning outside the window, not a shower. Rather the rain is falling in a steady, dense, continuous downpour.



Because I have been unable to get through to the vegetable garden for four days I am confronted by what seems a prodigious growth. Lettuces have bulked up and the oriental mustards are asking to be sheered. The weeds are looking pleased with themselves, and require immediate hoeing.



After this morning's heavy rain there is a strange pattern of twigs on the footpath up which I climb. Is it the work of a child? Then I realize that the heavy rain of this morning, overflowing from the paths in the Grove, has streamed down the pavement leaving a parabola of detritus.

Compasses a New Installment

A new set of photographs by Lucy Kempton illustrates five more of the Handbook for Explorers (15- 20) poems on www.compasses-lucyandjoe.blogspot.com/

monbretia, lemon grass, iced lolly

Sprays of monbretia, tending to scarlet rather than orange, are transferred from a flower shop window to a vase in our sitting room.

The fresh, spicey taste of lemon grass, lime leaves, gallingal and chilli linger after a Thai meal, on the palate and later in the memory.

A father and son are walking side by side through the Grove. Both are sucking bright yellow iced lollies.

lavender, winged seeds, shadows

If on the train from London, Charing Cross to Hastings, sit on the left of the train and look out for the fields of lavender after Orpington and just before Sevenoaks.

Today, winged seeds twirl in the wind, presaging autumn, when summer is barely with us.

Copses on the sunlit common have deep and mysterious depths.

cricket, age, ragwort

A mother and father are playing cricket with their small son. The little boy stands in front of a miniature set of stumps. The mother stands behind the wicket. The father lobs the rubber ball gently to the boy. The boy whacks it as far as he can and runs to the far end of the improvised pitch and back. There are no fielders, and the father ambles after the ball, as though he was on his way to a buy a Sunday paper, while the boy runs and runs. This happens again and again. The father never hurries and the boy never misses so that the mother, behind the wicket has nothing to do.



Today, I reflect that I now see people as young, who once I would have thought of as old.


Yellow clumps of ragwort are scattered over the fields, just now. In Scottish and Irish legend, it was used by fairies, who rode on ragwort sticks between islands, as a means of travel. Known as the herba sancta Jacobi, it is associated with the feast of St James, July 25, when it is in full blossom.

cheers, quark, fuschia

"Cheers, bruv," says the guard on the train when I show him my ticket.

The word quark signifies two very different things: a low fat curd cheese, and a sub atomic or elementary particle, hypothetical rather than directly observable. Setting aside the cheese, I learn today that the quark is linguistically rich. Six kinds of quark have been named. They are: up quark, down quark, charmed quark, strange quark, bottom quark and top quark. Bottom quark is sometimes also known as beauty and top quark as truth.

Two fuschias are in full flower in the garden just now. Lineaus would have enjoyed the sight. He compared the sexual parts of flowers to complicated human relationships. The fuschia, which usually has eight stamens, he described, "as eight men in the same bridal suite with one woman."

surprise, buddleia, cheers

A young woman, who, for want of friendliness in the past, I supposed did not like me, stops to talk to me in the Grove. We walk on together until our ways part.

Buddleia is everywhere in flower. Most of the year the shrub looks faded and untidy, particularly on the edge of railway lines, where it seems to have found a friendly place to grow. But today, the usually purple, sometimes white, cones or spikes of crowded, tiny flowers, each with a yellow centre only noticeable when you look closely, are spectacular, as they twist into the sun. Buddleia is sometimes known as the butterfly shrub because butterflies like it, but in the vicinity of the buddleias I see, there are no butterflies in sight today.

In Dover Street in London, a stately man wearing a panama hat and a black tail coat stops in a doorway to address a small grop of tourists. He is wearing a green carnation; a matching green handkerchief flows out of his top pocket.

No bonus, bonus, paintings on show

On the train: "There are two carriages of students at the back," says the guard to the catering attendant. "No bonus!" says the catering attendant from behind his trolley.

Flowers rising above the achitectural leaves of hosta appear as a bonus.

Familiar pictures in a new setting. Seven of Heidi's were today installed in the bar of Langan's Brasserie in London, where they will be on display for the next three months.

New view, lime petals, out of context

From the Grove, a high point in Tunbridge Wells, I note an unusual view of the tower of Trinity Church (now an arts centre). In the foreground are the upper floors of Hoopers, the department store. From the roof of Hoopers, flies a bold red flag, upon which is inscribed the single word: sale. The flag almost obscures the Victorian gothic church tower.

A rain of petals blows down from the lime tree, swirls in the sun, and covers the table in the garden, with crumbs of green and gold.

I like meeting people in unexpected places. There is a Spanish woman who works on the delicatessen counter at Sainsbury's. We often exchange greetings in Spanish when I am stocking up with serrano ham. Today, when in Tesco at the top of the town, I feel a tap on my shoulder, and there she is, back from her holidays in Spain, but a customer now, and shopping in a rival chain.

rabbit, baby and tree, aaron's rod

In the street, I pass a fat, ginger-coloured rabbit. As it nibbles the grass verge, it looks at me without much interest. It is clearly a pet and not a wild rabbit. After a while it lopes off and hides under a car. I believe I might know its owner but that would only be a guess. How do you capture a rabbit? Should I grab its ears and carry it that way, as I used to see farmers carrying rabbits for sale in Spanish market places? This afternoon I meet the supposed owner in the street. People think it's mine but it isn't," she says. " It lives on the other side of the road. It's always getting out. It's called Biggles."

A woman takes her baby out of its pushchair and carries it to the trunk of one of the spreading copper beeches in the Grove. She introduces the child to the tree. It pats the bark and laughs.

The tall, yellow spikes of Mullein, also known as Aaron's Rod, Verbascum thapsus, are appearing just now in neglected and uneglected gardens. It is a native perennial, a wild flower, but looks like a garden plant. Geoffrey Grigson, in An Englishman's Flora, says "It is a plant that cannot be overlooked," and quotes Henry Lyte (1578): "The whole toppe with its pleasant yellow floures, sheweth like to a wax candle or taper cunningly wrought." According to another book its leaves were once used to treat bronchial troubles and smoked in a pipe as herbal tobacco."

New things, flying, peace

Particularly where flowers are concerned discovering the French name is like seeing the flower for the first time. This comes to me when I note for the second or third time in my filter of a memory that hawthorn in French is aubépine.



By chance, I dsicover that Google Earth has been upgraded. Playing with the new program, I type in the addresses of people in my address book, watch the earth tilt beneath me, and close in on their back gardens or front doors.



Peace. The central heating engineers have said goodbye. I don't believe that I have used the word before, but the quiet is palpable.

song, dog, jays

One of the noisy, cheerful young men who are upgrading the central heating unexpectedly sings, in a falsetto voice, the line of a song along with the radio which has been blasting all day: 'cos I know you're gay... " Judging by page 3 of the tabloid newspaper, which he left behind yesterday, he is not.

A car passes with a terrier of some kind, its head out of the window of the front passenger seat. Exhilirated by the airstream, it barks at me and other pedestrians.

On the common, I see a party of three jays flying with slowly flapping wings among the trees. I have alway liked jays for their bright plumage. They were one of the first birds I learnt to recognise as a child. As I walk on, one of them says "skaak", behind me, which is what jays are supposed to say.

keeping dry, prosecco, snapshot

After one day without rain, while in the vegetable garden, I forget for a moment about showers, and down comes a heavy one. I stand in the greenhouse while the drops clatter on the roof and slide down the glass. I watch the paving begin to shine and the earth to absorb the water. A moment of mindless happiness.

Workmen have come to replace our old, very old gas-boiler, and shout to one another from floor to floor and room to room. One is called Flash and another Stew. They are efficient and cheerful and noisy. The kitchen is inaccessible. I buy a couple of sandwiches from the Italian shop at the bottom of the hill, open a chilled bottle of Prosecco, and we picnic among the books.

In the street, I pass a baby in a push chair. Father pushes the chair; the mother holds the baby's hand as though the baby was walking rather than sitting beside her. The thumb of the baby's other hand is in its mouth. A fleeting family portrait, which, probably, no one will remember except me.

silence, ok, sounds of tennis

Silence is to be treasured. But do we ever experience complete silence? And do we want to? When there is silence, there is usually the wind somewhere about, or the sea, or a distant engine , or the sound of breathing, or your heart beating.

In Waitrose this morning, I realize that I still feel pleased with myself, when "pin ok" comes up on a credit card reader.

Now that Wimbledon is over, there will be a rest from the sounds of tennis on the tv calling you to the room, when you have taken a break from it. The crowd-sounds, like waves breaking or a lorry passing outside the window; the shriek or grunt of the players as they strike the ball ( a new feature of the game, this), the drone of the commentators. I won't miss them, but I enjoyed them while they were there.

dust, lords and ladies, no euphemism

A piece of fluff, a solitary amalgamation of dust , left over, I suppose, after my book-clearing yesterday, scuttles across a table moved by a breath of air, so that I think for a moment it is an insect.

In a shady corner of the garden, the as-yet green fruit of lords-and-ladies or cuckoo pint cluster among broad, pointed leaves. They seem to be selling something sinister, or is it just the promise of autumn, when summer has hardly begun.

The man who owns the fish and chip shop up gets up from his table outside the pub and, on his way to the gents, says to his companions: "I'm going to hang my willy out".

book space, torta, dry

Making space on bookshelves is the hardest of tasks, but rewarding when the shelves are unencumbered with books resting horzontally on top of their properly arranged companions, or squeezed in too tightly where they don't belong. Sad though to say goodbye even to the scruffiest of books which you are least likely to need again. Though you know, that once it is gone, you will remember it and find a need for it.



A thin, Spanish biscuit made with olive oil, sugar and flour and season with aniseed. Rich but not too sweet, crunchy but giving.



A day, the first for a week - it seems a month - with any rain at all.

Correction

Please note that the link to Compasses in yesterday's post has now been corrected and is working.

explorers, dressing, understanding

Lucy Kempton has just completed a set of five more illustrations of my sequence of poems Handbook for Explorers. I have been looking forward to them as though they were the next installment of a serial story. Though I know the words, I don't know how Lucy will have interpreted them. When I see the photographs, the words, though they are the same, seem seem to have been refreshed and to have taken on new dimensions. http://www.compasses-lucyandjoe.blogspot.com/

A salad dressing made with mustard, lemon juice and vinegar, into which an egg yoke has been beaten, and to which oil is added drop by drop. It's like mayonaise but lighter and more spicey.

This morning I had to read something in French several times, until, eventually, I experienced one of those dawns of understanding, which make you see an object as though for the first time. This is one of the reasons why it is always worthwhile to read something in another language.

broad beans, baby conkers, contrast

The youngest and freshest broad beans, picked this morning, are not much bigger than garden peas. A pithy smell when they are taken from the velvet lining of the pods. On the plate, the emerald beans, peep through fissures in their grey jackets.

Summer has scarcely begun, yet bunches of spikey, conkers already hang from the horse chestnuts.

The sun is shining and the sky is blue in one corner. In the other corner, is a massive, purple bank of cloud, against which trees and rooftops are highlighted by the sun - the light and the dark.

balloons and reflections, jungle, asleep

In his classic biography Shelley - The Pursuit, Richard Holmes describes how the poet, aged 20, distributes subversive political views, with the help of miniature, hot-air balloons. He was living at the time with his wife, Harriet, in a cottage in Lynmouth, Devon. They cut up pieces of silk, from which they made the balloons, and suspended pamphlets beneath them, before launching them, complete with fire baskets, over the Bristol Channel. From the moment I read that, I was won over to Shelley, whom I had not previously fully appreciated. Now, I read in an article by Anne Wroe, author, of a new book on Shelley, descriptions of him staring into lakes, pools and puddles, enraptured by the relationship between the real and the reflected world, which makes me like him all the more. After several descriptions of the poet transfixed by such reflections, she quotes from Promethius Unbound:

"And thinning one bright bunch of amber berries
With quick long beaks, and in the deep there lay,
Those lovely forms imaged as in the sky".

She quotes him again asking from Pisa:

"Why is the reflexion in that canal far more beautiful than the object it reflects. The colours are more vivid, & yet blended with more harmony & the openings from within the soft & tender colours of the distant wood & the intersection of the mountain line surpass & misrepresent truth".




Plants such as ferns and broad leaved trees flourish in the humid atmosphere where rain is followed by sun. They release powerful scents; oils and resins infuse the air. I walk out after a heavy shower among dripping plants as if in a jungle.


On the Common, I see a person asleep on a bench sheltered by a canopy of branches. Birds are singing. The sound of traffic is distant. There are worse places to be asleep.

Received Idea, expectations, fleeting

"Alright: What everything's going to be". From Joe Plutarch's Dictionary of Received Ideas.

When I make my way to the vegetable garden after a couple of day's absence, I always feel, as I did this morning, a strong sense of excitement and anticipation of growth and abundance. It reminds me of a similar feeling I had on my way to the tennis courts, when I used to play tennis, and looked forward to the satisfaction of hitting the ball square in the middle of the racket.

When you catch sight of something in the corner of your eye, fleeting past, and you think, if I believed in angels, that would be an angel.

connected, sparkle, lions

Around 6 o'clock, I get up for a pee, and, just for a minute, switch on radio 4 (BBC world service at this time on Sunday). It is not to wake me up, but rather to top up my dreams which are losing definition and crowding out of my head. I hear a woman's voice (American) talking about the interconnectivity of the universe. "We are not separate from nature", she is saying; "We are part of it. We are not part of a hierarchy as we used to believe; we are part of a holarchy. Then she quotes someone, who said: "Pick a flower, and you'll move the furthest star". As good a s a dream.

In the sun, after the rain, everthing looks washed. Tiny drops glitter in the grass, on bracken, on the leaves of trees. The tarmac on paths shines like a mirror. Steams rises


There are benches in the High Street, with wooden slats, and cast iron frames, painted a sort of faded burgundy. I haven't looked closely at them before, and, this afternoon, note for the first time that the lateral frames curl over, behind the backrest, in the shape of lion's heads. Moulded into the side of the frames, the face of a lion stares out from beneath the seat on either side.

collecting, accuracy, sentiment

When I was a child I collected postage stamps. After giving up, I did not again consciously collect anything. Until fairly recently, that is. I have come to realise that for the last two years, since I started this blog, I have, every day, been collecting and seriously looking for the sort of things that go into it - things that give pleasure, amuse, make you think. To look out for them every day seems to me to be better than collecting stamps, or collecting anything else for that matter.

Watching Roger Federer on TV for a few minutes yesterday evening, I realize that powerful serves and drives in tennis are nothing without elegance and accuracy. Elegance and swiftness in footwork and balance, accuracy in postioning the ball where you want it and your opponent doesn't- at the baseline, just over the net, in the corner of the service box. A backhand drive whizzing low over the net down the tramlines is thing of beauty and a joy for ever.

I woke to day thinking, I don't know why, about sentimentality. "I don't like sentimentality," said a friend of mine recently. Neither do I, I said. And no more do I now. But somehow the subject drifted away. I didn't say what had been on the point of saying, an esprit de l'escalier. This morning, I say it to myself: Sentiment is another matter. Sentimentality distorts the truth; sentiment reinforces it.

Early rain, raindrops, St Martin's,

This morning as I wake, I hear outside the window, a stationary lorry with its engine running. Then I realize, with pleasure, that it is the hushed sound of rain falling, steadily and without any urgency.

As I pass the big oak on the corner of the Grove, I hear heavy rain drops, and consider taking shelter under it. The rain continues overhead, until I realize that the drops have gathered on the leaves after the last shower, and the breeze is throwing them down. Beyond the canopy of the tree, it is not raining. I think of a large dog shaking itself after swimming.

The church of St Martin's-in-the Fields in Trafalagar Square is being restored. To protect the builders and avoid an eyesore, huge hoardings have been erected round the building. On them, as on a piece of stage scenery, the church as been accurately recreated life size. The bell tower rising above the hoardings is the only part of the building visible. It is as though a famous person was hiding behind his portrait.

time off, flags, horsetail

On the train a young man, in a faded baseball cap, says to one of his mates: "When I'm 30, I'm going to save up some money, take a couple of years off, get a camper van and travel all over America. Know what I mean..."

In the Mall, union flags, at a 45 degree angle, reach across both side of the road, all the way from Admiralty Arch to Buckingham Palace. In Bond Street, flags, at a 45 deg angle reach across both sides of the road, as far as the eye can see. Each flag bears the name and logo of a well known consumer or fashion brand, whose premises are below: Max Mara, DKNY, Tifany, Omega, Mount Blanc, Rolex, Aspreys ....

From the train, I spy horsetail, the most pernicious weed I have ever encountered - it used to inhabit an allotment, I once ran - but there on the embankment, the feathery jointed stems and scale-like leaves, which I remember so well, seem innocent enough and admit nothing of their deep and persistent root system.

Compasses updated

Five more poems and a new set of photographs on http://www.compasses-lucyandjoe.blogspot.com/

right page, lettuce, beard

This morning, the dictionary opens in the right place, with the word I wanted keyed at the top of the page.

I cut two perfect lettuces, like giant, green roses.

In a corner of the vegetable garden there is a tennis ball. It is in good condition, with the nap still on it, and the words Wilsons" and "open", still legible, except that a large tuft of grass grows out of one side like a beard.

emails, presence, loaves

What is the difference between an email and a letter? As I no longer send or receive emails in the context of work, they give me as much pleasure as sending and receiving letters from friends and family used to. I was never a good correspondent. I fussed about the wording, wanting get it right, even in casual notes. The word processing facility has been a great liberator. That is not to say that I don't take trouble over emails. I do, but the knowledge that I can correct what I have written, has allowed my words to flow as they never could in long hand or on a steam-typewriter, however much I desired that they would.

In the vegetable garden I feel a presence. I am surrounded by glancing shadows and mysterious reflections shining over my shoulder. For a moment, I had forgotten them. They are the cds which I hung up, a few days ago, to deter the pigeons from eating my spinach. If they work on me they should work on the pigeons.

Three perfect loaves come out of the oven, and sit on a rack on the dresser. There is a smell of yeast, and of the pine kernels and pumpkin seeds, which I mixed with the dough and which now break from the bread's crust, where they have become little, brown nuggets.

weather,security,chard

They are grumbling about the weather. Weather (freak storms and tsunamis excluded) I like: weather forecasts, I do not. It seems uneccessary to spend time anticipating the worst or the best, when there is plenty to be getting on with. Sufficient unto the day... Any weather is better than no weather, and most of it - rain, like to day - storm or sunshine, can be beautiful, depending on where you are standing and what you are looking for.

Outside the jewelers in the High Street, there is always a burly security guard. Today he carries, anomolously, a pale green, dripping umbrella.

The first shiny-leafed chard from the garden today. It will be cooked with potatoes already boiled, finely chopped shallots, a little mint, and eggs, added at the last minute, and scrambled with the vegetables.

Zola, wet petals, parrot

As I draw near to the end of L'Assommoir, I realize that it will be the fifth of Zola's novels that I have read in the last year or so. What I have most enjoyed is discovering these books for myself. Most of the books I have read have been recommended by parents or teachers or reviewers. I have read very little about Zola. It is true that when I was at school someone recommended Germinal, but I was put off reading it by the impression, quite false as it turned out, that it might be a didactic piece of work, almost a socialist tract. Twenty novels in the Rougon-Maquart series are listed at the back of the Folio Classique edition, plus three more. I am so enthralled at the moment that I have my sights set on all of them. What I am discovering about Rougon-Maquart is that Zola placed relations or other connection with the family of this name in all the books. Sometimes it seems the connection is quite loose, and you certainly don't have to read the books in any particulal order. For me, a newcomer, it came as a pleasant surprise, to see Nana, the central character of the eponymous Nana, appear as a child in L'Assommoir. Having read Nana first, I say to myself: "that explains a lot".

Petals of the dark red petunias in various pots in the garden , shine in the rain, like highly polished metal.

In the street I hear a loud squawk. I look up. There, in a window, sits a parrot on a perch.

brick, endurance, relief

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

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

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

lime, shining discs, distant traffic

Lime trees are in flower again; the pale yellow flowers hang below the single wing-like bracts, which will carry the seeds, already half formed formed, on winds, which are yet to blow.

I hang discarded cds and dvds on strings above the romanesco plants, with the intention of scaring off the pigeons, which have already devoured the remainder of the seedlings in the seed bed. But I wonder whether it will be in vain. Birds are more intelligent than we sometimes believe them to be. How long will it be before the pigeons work out that shining discs will not hurt them, rather that they signify a source of sweet green leaves?

As I walk up slopes of the common, the sound of traffic whizzing up and down the London Road, quickly becomes no more than a muffled drone, as though someone has thrown a blanket over it.

lavender, magpie, wild flowers

A small wooden crate is tightly packed with pots of French lavender outside a garden shop.

In the vegetable garden a magpie disturbs the peace with a horrendous noise. The usual French name for magpie is pie. An alternative name is jacasse, from where comes the verb jacasser, to speak volubly. Today I can understand why.

There is, or was, a narrow strip of front garden half way up the road where I live which has been sown with wild flowers. Most of the year it looked a mess, but in the last few days, the poppies and corn flowers blossomed justifying its existence. Yesterday, on a visit to our house, Tristan, a regular visitor to this blog, took a photograph of it. You can see it on yesterday's post in http://www.emotionalblackmailers/. Just as well he did photograph it, because today, when it is looking at its best, a gardener has torn out the flowers, leaving a strip of bare earth. It is not the first time this eccentric flower bed has been blogged. Last year it featured on this blog, and a very short time ago, Clare Grant mentioned it in http://www.threebeautifulthings.blogspot.com/

petal, sweet and sour, hazel

A rose petal must have caught on my collar while I was sitting in the garden. It falls on to my desk. What is this? It is white, heart-shaped and transparent. There is a silken sheen on the delicately ridged surface; the ridges are fine lines radiating from the point, where the petal was joined to the corolla; the fine, translucent membrane curls slightly; light and shade follow its undulations. That such a complex, delicate material should exist, it seems unbidden, is worth noting, whether it is a chance occurrence or part of some unfathomable plan.

A perfectly balanced combination of sweet and sour, supporting to perfection its lingering aromatic flavours, is how I would describe the small, yellow mango called "golden mango" (Is it the same as the variety called Alphonso, which shares its qualities?) I found it in Sainsbury's last Sunday. It compares more than favourably with the standard supermarket mango even when the standard fruit is ripe and oozing juice. This sweet and sour balance, it seems to me, is important in all fruit and of course in wine (consider the great sweet wines of France and Germany, which are nothing if the impact of sugar and fruit is not supported by a firm backbone of acidity. In relationships too, sweetness, on its own cloys. Love between people needs an edge, a sharp line, where truth and honesty can carve a space for affection.

Where Major York's Road bisects the common, a hazel tree shows early nuts like little green lights. I wonder if the squirrels will spare these until they are ripe. The hazel trees adjoining my vegetable garden are invariably marauded by squirrels, which, in late summer, tear the nuts from the branches before they have time to form kernals, and scatter the broken, barren shells on the path where they crunch under foot.

two builders, answered prayer, cricket

A pigeon flies to and fro over the vegetable garden, on each occasion, a twig or straw in its beak. It is building a nest, while down below, with the the help of stakes, string and netting, I am building structures to stop it eating my spinach, and romanesco.

I read of a woman who, while at school gave the Amazon as the longest river in the world in a test. After the test, she realized that the correct answer was the Nile and prayed that God would make the Amazon longer. Now geographers have announced that the Amazon rises further west than had previously been thought, and is therefore the world's longest river, and not the Nile, as we were taught at school.

Behind me I hear the unmistakeable voice (something about the pace of the words) of a cricket commentator. An elderly man overtakes me. He is holding the hand of a small boy. In his other hand, is a radio, whence the commentary. I learn that England needs 110 to win the fourth and final test against the West Indies.

suns, stories, drying

Hypericum with its bold yellow flowers and untidy habit can seem a little gross at times, but it can appeal, too, when you look closely at it. Today, coming up the hill, I see it as a bush covered in suns.



I have been thinking about stories that send you to sleep and stories that keep you awake. Sometimes the same stories can do both and sometimes the same story sends some people to sleep and keeps others awake. In Segei Aksakov's Years of Childhood, he tells of an attack of sleeplessness. "And this", he says " put my my mother off her sleep, as she slept best in the early part of the night. To send us to sleep, we took the advice of my aunt and summoned to our aid Pelageya, the housekeeper.... I need hardly say that I stayed awake until the story (it was called the Scarlet Flower) was ended, so that I slept even less than usual.... It sent my mother to sleep at once; but when she awoke some hours later and found that I had not been asleep, and was discussing the story with Pelegaya, she sent her off. And it was very long before fairy-tales were again used in the house to send people to sleep.

I myself usually have little difficulty in getting to sleep at night, but if I do, I tell myself a story or deliver myself an after dinner speech, which nearly always sends me off.



A wet night and a warm, damp morning, dripping and humid. But this afternoon: a bluff, drying wind, makes you feel like a sheet on a clothes-line.

alive alive O, ham talk, the Common

In Sainsbury's a notice on a stand where there are pots of herbs, annnounces "Live basil".

At the delicatessen counter I ask for some serrano ham. The man standing next to me says: "That's too salty for me!" "Haven't we had this conversation, before?" I say. "Yes", he says. It is in fact the third time we have talked about serrano ham and his salt intolerence, and the second time I have asked: "Haven't we had this conversation before?"

Tunbridge Wells common curls round the older part of the town like a large green cat. It is a quiet place.This afternoon I pass only one young couple as I climb the path from the road. A bank of rose bay willow herb rises above the feathery panicles of meadow grass. Blackberries are in flower. Bracken grows tall with some of its fronds still on the point or unfurling. In the space of five minutes, I encounter, along the unmade paths, a rabbit, a deer, and a fox. A contrast to the London Road, a couple of hundred yards below, where there is a continuous flow of traffic, and to the Pantiles, where people saunter, peer into shops, sit outside pubs and cafes, drink wine and beer.

bird life, singer, compasses

House martins have been busy in the nest, which they built last yearunder the eves of one of the houses opposite. The young blackbirds in our hedge have, meanwhile, fledged. The world of birds and the human world proceed in parallel.

A man, who walks about the town singing loudly and tunelessly but always cheerfully, is one of the characters we have become used to in Tunbridge Wells. Most people turn away in embarrasment when he approaches them, but a woman in charge of the organic meat stall at the Farmers Market in the Pantiles, today, says in a friendly way: "Hullo". He stops singing and chats to her.

For some time I have been unable to enter links in the box on the side of this log. But an opportunity to re-format has allowed me to correct this want. And just in time. There is a new blog, the iniatiative of Lucy Kempton, a regular visitor to this one, which is our joint domain. In it, she has set out to illustrate, with her beautiful and mysterious photographs, the series of 50 sonnets, which I wrote a few years ago. The photographs are not mere illustrations, which seek to repeat images from the poems, but, instead, introduce complementary images, which extend and qualify the text, and stand in their own right. I have never sought publications for these poems, but this is better. The new site is called http://www.compasses-lucyandjoe.blogspot.com/ There us now a permanent link to the site in the right hand frame, and there will soon be other links to the sites of other visitors and those which I visit. Where the stone falls in the pond, the circles grown wide.

bubbles, promise, buffet

Bubbles, float over a wall into the Grove. You can't see where they come from, but they drift in the wind, at first in a crowd (what is the collective noun for bubbles?) then separate I watch a bubble, a hint of colour, the sheen of oil in water, on its skin, as it floats against the sun. It's still there, something perfect that will not last. Now its gone. Well. what is the collective noun for bubbles?

Bad weather is promised for today, but when I awake the sun is showing through the slats of the blinds, profiling the window frames. They throw stripe-shadows on the white wall. The whole world is out there, birds, animals, trees, roads, people, tranquility, horror. I can't wait to see what's happening.

After a heavy shower, Calverley Park has been washed clean of people. But judging by the birds, starlings, blackbirds in particular, spreading over and pecking at the grass, the rain has provided a buffet of worms.

THURSDAY, 14 JUNE 2007

rescue, jingle, lavender
In the Oxfam bookshop the other day, I spotted a book, which I read a couple of years ago, and of which I have long cherished my own copy. But I wanted to buy this one nevertheless, to pay homage to it, to rescue it. My hand hovered over it. I pulled it out, and reluctantly returned it to the shelf, a needless extravagance. Bouvard et Pecuchet, is Flaubert's last novel and was not widely appreciated when it was published after his death. It has since been undeservedly neglected. It was clearly ahead of its time. It was only when I got home that I thought of a friend who might like it. The next day I rescued it, indeed; and it is with pleasure that I can say, today, that it is on its way to a new and deserving owner.

In the Grove, I pass a woman with a bag over her shoulder. What is in it? As she walks, she jingles. I hear her fading into the distance like the tinkle of Alpine cowbells.

Two adjacent beds of lavender in Calverley Park. White lavender is mixed in with the blue. As I walk past, I move through waves of scent on this heavy, balmy afternoon.

snubbed, framed, about to be cooked

I had occasion the other day to speak severely to the pretty, marmalade cat that visits the vegetable garden sometimes, and sometimes our own garden at home. Knowing the way of cats, I was concerned about the blackbirds and their nest in the hedge. Whereas, there used to be some kind of acknowledgement, when I greeted her before, she now looks away when I say hullo. It serves me right, I suppose.


In the frame of an open window a woman sits in profile, like a picture in a frame.

Two girls, dressed with the intention of getting brown, greet each other in Calverley Park. Where's the sun?" asks one. "There," says the other pointing to the sun, which glares down from a blue sky, where you might expect it to be.

jungle, wedding,barbie

There is one wild bed in the vegetable garden, where weeds and last year's vegetables are having a party. I stand in the middle of it and make a list of what I can see and identify: a parsnip plant six foot tall, umbels on the verge of flowering; sow thistles, stately and challenging; sticky rollicking, goosegrass ; herb Robert peeping between more strident herbs; nettles with thin green beards; wild clematis or bind weed, creeping and twining and binding on a shopping spree. And one noble foxglove, queen of the ball.

In the High Street this afternoon a wedding party of suited blokes and girls in their best pour into Sopranos, the tapas bar, and spill out on to the narrow pavement with champagne (cava?) glasses, drinking and nattering and nibbling.

In the corner of a bench, a barbie doll - short skirt, thin legs like a starved fashion model's and bare feet, stands pale and forgotten.

welcome, walk, head first

Half way through Sergei Aksakov's memoir of his childhood in Russia at the end of the 18th century, I find these words of welcome (and forthright account of what is expected of guests) from his great Aunt (his father's aunt) to his mother and her family.
"I receive you thus in my bedroom, because it's the first time. I am no great lover of children, especially children in arms: I can't endure their screaming, and they are seldom sweet. Bring the children to me when I send for them. Serezha, of course, is older, and he may be shown to visitors. The children will have all their meal in their own rooms; they have the dining room as well, to play and run about in. It's a mistake to mix up children and grown up people. And now, my dear Sofya Nikolaevna, live in my house as if it were your own. State your wishes, give your orders - they shall be obeyed. When you want to see me, you are welcome here: if you don't want to see me, sit all day in your room: I shan't be offended; I can't endure tiresome people myself. I love you as if you were of my own blood, but I don't intend to put any constraint on myself on your account. All guests in this house are in that position. I don't make myself troublesome to anyone, and I expect others not to make themselves troublesome to me".

A rust coloured dog of uncertain breed, walks straight across the Grove from one side to the other. He looks neither to right nor left and stops neither to sniff nor pee. He is entirely in his own. I have seen him before and noted his independence. He hesitates only once when he passes a bull terrier on a lead, but only slows down and alters his course by a few inches so as not to collide, franternise or quarrel.

It's a pleasure to watch the parent blackbirds plunge into the hedge head first to feed their young, like ducks looking for treasure at the bottom of a pond.

cat on pool, chard, received idea

To reach the vegetable garden I have to pass a domestic swimming pool. The pool is usually covered with a stout blue sheet, which rests on the water. Today, I see the pretty, marmalade cat curled up, asleep on the pool cover, as though it were a water-bed.

A row of ruby chard and a row of green chard. I use thethinnings for salad. Soon the leaves and wide, juicy stems will be big and shiny. When I first started growing chard, it used to be called perpetual spinach or spinach beet, and I used not to thin it out, until I noticed how well it grew when there were 9in or more between plants. Then, in the market in Concarneau in Brittany, I saw, on a stand tended by a husband and wife, giant chard leaves arranged in piles. There was a long queue for it and, since then, I have always grown it as chard. And chard has become a much more usual vegetable for gardeners and for cooks. For photographs of mature chard, see a recent posting by Lucy Kempton in http://www.box-elder.blogspot.com/

From Plutarch's Dictionary of Received Opinion. Honesty is the best policy: Generally used by people who are in the habit of leaving out the qualifying clause "as a last resort".

posing 1, posing 2, nesting

I catch a pigeon guiding London visitors to the Queen.

In the Pantiles a young woman poses by one of our smart black and gold rubbish bins. She leans towards it spreading her arms wide and opens her mouth in a silent scream.

The blackbirds and their offspring nesting in the hedge are for the most part quiet during the day. We hear the young birds chirping in the the evening while their parents bring them a constant supply of filleted worms. The nest and its contents survived both my neighbour's hedge clipping, and, despite my firm instructions, the work of our own hedger, who was supposed to, but didn't, give the nesting place a wide berth. In previous years the blackbird nestlings in our garden have fledged during the men's singles final at Wimbledon. Could it happen again?

posing

mock orange, thunder, yorkshire pudding

The smell of phladelphus or mock orange as you walk down Mount Sion.

Thunder last night: a single roll was all I heard. I like the way it fades into a growl, and is followed by the splashing of heavy rain

An English guest from the USA comes for roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. The pudding rises like a souffle helped by an extra egg. It is light and brown with just a hint of softness in the middle. Gravy is in love with it and it, with gravy.

organic water, war time garden, bananas

It is reassuring to read the label on a bottle of Highland Spring water. It is described as organic. "Naturally filtered through lands certified as organic", it says.

In St James' Park, they have made a vegetable garden reminding people today of the vegetables grown in the Royal Parks during World War 2. There are a couple of scarecrows, rows of earthed-up spuds, lettuces, carrots, turnips and the like. On a fence is a Dig for Victory poster.

There are banana plants in the ornamental flower beds in the Embankment Gardens. I comment on them to a gardener who is watering them with a hose. "They've just come out, " he says. "They go indoors in the winter."

bean poles, bubbles, pet shop

Today, I finish one of my favourite jobs - putting up bamboo stakes for climbing beans. I have two kinds of frame. The first is a traditional continuous structure like a pitched roof, where two sets of stakes are crossed over toward the top, tied together and linked by horizontal stakes extending the length of the row. The second is a series of wigwam frames, where the beans grow in circles and climb inwards, then outwards when the they come to the overhang. The framworks will provide supports for runner beans called Lady Di and White Lady, and a purple bean called Blauhilde because it was so good and so fruitful last year. And, for the first time, an Italian Borloti bean.

In the shopping precinct, there is a machine blowing bubbles. It consists of a tray in which a motor-driven wheel equipped with series of wires with circles at the end aligned in pairs. As the wheel turns, the wires rotate through a sink containing bubble liquid. Hundreds of bubble a minute fly into the air. Small children gather like flies.

I pass a pet shop called Wolfit.

end of the lollipop, sewing, beam me up

Upright on a bench in the Grove, an elderly lady, enjoying, to the last lick, one of those choc ices on a stick.


Through an open window and a gauze curtain comes, with momentary interruptions, the unmistakable whir, whir of a sewing machine.


According to day's paper the science behind the process of teleporting as in the Star Trek films is not entirely fanciful. Remember the phrase "Beam me up Scotty". At present teleporting potential is limited to information. In due course, why not people? I wouldn't know, but it is lovely to speculate about. The operative term is "quantum entanglement" which relies on the fact that two photons can be created in such a way that they behave as a single object even if they are separated by large distances. The teleportation machine is explained by the fact, says the science editor of the Independent, that changes to one photon cause similar changes to the other. A third photon is teleported from the proton in the transmitting station to the photon in the receiver. In the process, the third photon becomes entangled with the transmitting photon, and so carries its quantum information to the receiving photon, which interacts with the third photon in such a way that it becomes identical to it. The study from which this information comes is published in the journal Nature Physics.

anything special, psychedelic bollard, warning

"Are you doing anything special to day?" asks the woman at the checkout in Sainsburys this morning. I'm still wondering.

There are lot of descretely painted black bollards in this area to deter motorists from parking on the pavement. Someone, for a lark, has turned one of them into a sort of psychedelic totem, by overpainting it mauve at the top and turquoise at the base.

On the windows of a pub called the Orson Wells, which has been boarded up for some time and is about to undergo a complete refurbishment, is posted the notice: warning guard dogs running free.

differences, more differences, and yet more

What's the difference between a glove and a foxglove? Unlike a glove, a foxglove is more beautifully patterned on the inside than on the outside.

There had clearly been a difference of opinion this morning, as I inferred from the angry voice of a girl passing on the pavement on the other side of our hedge, complaining to a companion. ". all morning...he slammed the door in my face. He's been rude all morning. I bit my tongue, all morning." A snatch of soap opera.

In Emil Zola's novel L'Assomoir, differences in culinary styles between the north of France and the south are noted. Lantier, the character, to whom this refers, comes from Provence. "He made himself omelettes, omelettes cooked on both sides, crisped like pancakes. So solid that they might have been biscuits.... But his gala dinner was a soup made with vermicelli, very thick, into which he poured half a bottle of oil... Only he ate it, with Gervaise, because the others, the Parisians, once having risked a taste, had almost lost their guts and entrails."

Grass, hydrangea, elderflower

We are in the habit of cutting grass and of seeing it in its cropped form on lawns and in fields. But grass in flower and run to seed, is another and a better thing. Cereal crops aside, we miss a great deal where grass is concerned. And it's not just the feathery heads running in the wind - cream, pale yellow, red, gold, blue. In my grass book, I find the following grass names: Sweet Vernal Grass, Holy Grass, Feather Grass, Timothy Grass, Sand Cat's Tail, Meadow Cat's Tail, Creeping Bent, Yorkshire Fog,Gray Hair-Grass, Cocksfoot, Common Quaking-Grass, Mountain or Nodding Melick, Hairy Melick, Love Grass.



Climbing up the front of a terrace house, the cream-coloured flowers and pointed serrated leaves of Hydrangea petiolaris. It is a useful plant to cover a north or north-east facing wall, where other climbers are less happy or not happy at all. I imagine it clinging to a rock face in the foothills of the Himalayas, where it originates.



At this time of year the white saucers of elder, flying up the hedgerows or at the edge of woods lift the spirit; their scent is peculiarly English and makes me think of the Enigma Variations.