bud, Bonden, nuts

Wisteria bud and wisteria shadows.

It gives me pleasure to see that my friend Barrett Bonden has refused to be defeated by the cyber censor who labeled his new blog as possibly objectionable. He did withdraw a post about the beautiful, intrinsic design of a gun, while expressing distaste for the purpose to which guns are put. And he has launched a new blog- www.bbworkswell.blogspot.com but the health warning from Blogger has persisted despite his remaining posts being confined to mathematical equations, poetry, Ohm's law and other aspects of science and technology, which could not, by the remotest association, hurt anyone except the densely stupid.

In the small patch of lawn beside our house a small hole has appeared, and, by the hole, a couple of hazel nut shells. Although the setting of our house is largely urban - a street of 18th and 19th century houses - come to think of it, I have noticed a squirrel in our garden recently. It's good to think that we have unknowingly provided a larder for the creature.

wisteria, bonden, nuts

dandelion days,cricket, notebook

In the long grass, dandelions clocks glow like a mass of Chinese lanterns. Here's a montage of other aspects of this flower, understandably regarded as a weed by gardeners, but a star nevertheless.

The gentle clapping of hands signifies, because of its half hearted but benign enthusiasm, that a cricket match is in progress. It comes from the direction of the Nevill Cricket Ground, half a mile away as the crow flies - another sound of summer.

My notebook is becoming frayed at the spine. I like its worn look, which suggests experience, like lines on the faces of old people.

blue eyes, snack, floating

"'Twas from Kathleen's eyes he flew,

Eyes of most unholy blue!"

Evey now and then I come across a French word which appeals to me because of the image which it contains, which is unlike the equivalent in English or has no equivalent in English. A few months ago, I came upon the French word poireauter, derived from poireau, the French word for leek. It means to hang around waiting for someone or something when there is something better to do elsewhere. Now I have found the verb saucissoner, derived from saucisse, sausage, which means to picnic or to snack, or as Petit Larouse puts it, prendre un repas froid sur le pouce.

Over the vegetable garden, armadas of fluffy seeds float in the wind; petals of apple blossom fall; and the upper boughs of trees wave lazily at nothing in particular.

cherry, cinnamon, trumpet

The weight of blossom and a sturdy trunk.

In the pub the talk turns to cinnamon, a pretty word and a useful spice. We speak of cinnamon ice cream, and a medicine made of cinnamon and quinine (not so pleasant), and other uses, in cakes and curries. Michael says he likes the idea of carrots and leeks cooked with cinnamon. As we sit over our drinks, we think we can smell it and the cloves, which sometimes go with it.

This afternoon, it feels like summer. And sounds like it. From an open window, round a corner and a few houses distant, comes, through an open window, the sound of someone practicing scales on a trumpet. At least when it reaches me it is the sort of non-committal, idle sound, relaxed and sleepy, which you might expect on a May bank holiday.

See below

dandelion, legs, bitumen

Look closely at a dandelion, I say to myself, and you will see that it not as a weed to be despised but a flower to be admired.

Legs, of lamb, which have been boned, are displayed in the supermarket this morning. The label on each joint reads: "Boneless butterfly leg of lamb".

There is a smell of bitumen in the Grove and men are at work coating the lesser paths with it, scattering gravel on the bitumen, and rolling the paths with a diesel roller. The impression of toytown is enhanced by the children swinging and see-sawing in the play area and riding bicycles and scooters on the wider, more used paths; and by the brightly painted yellow vehicles supplying the materials for the work.

wall, pressed, water

"Some man or other must present Wall; and let him have some plaster or some loam, or some rough cast about him. to signify wall; and let him hold his fingers thus, and through that cranny shall Pyramus and Thisbe whisper".

At the pedestrian crossing an impatient elderly woman keeps her finger permanently on the button which operates the traffic lights. Not used to such treatment the lights remain stubbornly in favour of oncoming traffic until she removes her finger.

On the label of a bottle of spring water, which has apparently been flavoured with lemon juice, a note to the effect that the water is fat free.

bay, washing-up, technology

Waiting for a caserole. These are leaves from the the ailing bay which I brought to this house 20 years ago in a small flower pot. The tree is now 30 ft tall and, this year, the site of a blackbird's nest.



While watching the Ingmar Bergman film, the Passions of Anna on DVD, Heidi draws my attention to a scene where a man stands at a kitchen sink to attend to the washing up. "Men," she says, "invariably put dirty dishes, pans, glasses, cutlery, the lot in the sink together, to get them out of the way. While women approach the task more systematically, sorting and grading, before applying brush, cloth and sponge. I have a feeling that she is right.

In his new blog http://www.bbswhatworks.blogspot.com/ my friend Barrett Bonden refers to the "hideous beauty" of guns. He wouldn't have one in the house, he says, but admires their engineering, technical achievement and functional design. I share his admiration and his horror.

bite, shrunk shadow,wallflowers

The big bite. Another view of a stanchion.

An adult's bicycle leaning against a lamppost has a foreshortened shadow that could be that of a child's fairy bike. A reminder that the sun, summer being close, is now high in the sky.

I smell them first, the wallflowers. Then, I pass them, orange and yellow, brown, carmine and burgundy. And I remember that sometimes they are, prettily, called gilliflowers.

brick, print, overhead cable

There is an old wall opposite our house. This is the surface of just one brick on that wall.

Pressed into the pavement is a white magnolia petal. It bears the striated imprint of the sole of a shoe.

Drops of rain glide along the telephone wire outside our bedroom window at regular intervals like cars on an overhead cable way.

time and weather, forecast, flight

What can't be said is written here
In damp and lichen spread on walls,
(With time its slow interpreter),
And mimics flowers and animals,

And catches soldiers trundling by,
Lovers running through the grass,
And makes them dance or fall or fly
Or fade away like clouds that pass,

While in the grit and living leaf,
In crevice, fold and shadow,
How strange and past belief,
It fails and starts again to grow.

For sure, you'll see yourself
And watch your story told
All at once or half by half,
As frame and film unfold.

Look closely then and tread with care,
And learn how to forget,
Before you find out who you are

Or were or will be yet.

On the screen, this morning, the BBC weather forecast for today says Heavy Rain. I look out of the window. The sun is shining.

Black birds are nesting in the bay tree in the front garden. When we stand outside the front door, they swoop past us at knee level on their way to and from the nest.

abstract, carpets, camera angle

If someone had painted this, it would have taken a long time before he (or she) was satisfied with it. The camera is quicker though the labour of the elements no less intense.

Dandelions on one side of the path, daisies on the other, make carpets of gold and white where the grass in the Grove has not been cut.

In the window of an expensive tv and hi fi shop a young man is lying on his back on the floor beneath a CD player in the shape of a narrow column. There are slots for the disks - four in all -arranged one above the other, so that the disks face out, level with the front of the column. From the floor, he takes a photograph of the column with a digital camera pointing upwards.

armed, white bluebell, conversation

I have to look up the word "stanchion" to see if that is what this is. I think it may be.

A white bluebell appears in a patch of blue bluebells where, in previous years, there were only blue bluebells.

"Have you done anything exciting this week?" asks the checkout girl at Sainsbury's. "Yes," I say because it seems the easiest alternative to a dissertation. Half way through the checkout procedure she pursues the conversation: "Are you looking forward to anything next week?"

poster, the end, clock

Announced and forgotten. "What images return
O my daughter."

There is a man who wanders round Tunbridge Wells singing loudly, a tuneless incantation. He is in full throat this morning in the middle of the farmers' market. He is wearing a red fez and carries an orange, plastic bag. People smile and look away. He sings the same words over and over again. "It's the end of the world tomorrow." He draws out the syllables and repeats "tomorrow." Again: "It's the end of the world, tomorrow....To blow us all away."

In a greenhouse, by no apparent design, is a single dandelion clock on top of a long stem. Through the transparent, silvery sphere, you can see the brown core where the seeds reside beneath their tufted wings. No breath of air disturbs this perfect structure.

indignation, fashions, spared

Artifact with expression.

One of the pleasures of reading nineteenth century novels is to note, that while human nature remains much the same, fashion can go to the other extreme. In Zola's Une Page d'Amour, a woman asks her neighbour, having just returned from her holidays in Deauville, if she appears brown. The inference is quite clearly that she should have, and has in fact, remained respectably pale.

There is a clap of thunder and huge, dense drops of rain begin to fall. I am unprepared for rain, but fortunately find myself outside a bookshop. Where better to take shelter?

surface, euphorbia, honey mangoes

Shapes and colours, usually ignored on a disintegrating wall prove full of promise when photographed. Seams, wrinkles and fissures become tokens of a state of being.



Modest flowers suit me best. What more modest than euphorbia with its clusters of greenish yellow, heart-shaped petals and green bracts!

Some little, golden mangoes described as "Ghana honey mangoes" are soft to the touch and aromatic. "I bet they taste good, " I say to the greengrocer on the strength of their perfume alone. "There's a little old lady," he says, "who has bought two every day, since I have had them."

cross section, towels, Jack Russell

Looking down on the top of a wooden post, I see someone looking out.

Freshly laundered folded towels on a shelf.

A Jack Russell on a lead after a squirrel, barks up a tree, puts its paws on the trunk as though to climb it.

spring, smoking, ignorance

• 
• On this tree, opening soon!

• A man, in white overalls, up a ladder, paints the wall of a house and smokes a pipe while he is at work.

• I think to myself: I know very little but I know enough to know how little I know.

footsteps, laughter, bush tea

In the footsteps of ivy: where the live tendrils have been torn from a wall leaving behind their withered imprints.


In the Radio 4 programme, Start the Week, they are discussing laughter. They say that human being are distinguished from other animals by the capacity to laugh. Or, I think to myself, to see the joke? "Laughter", one of the speakers says, "is a reaction to how things are in contrast to how they ought to be".

When I read The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency soon after it first came out (it has since been followed by numerous sequals, I did not think that the red bush tea which Mma Precious Ramotwe offers to her clients would be available in UK supermarkets. Perhaps as a result of the success of these unusual detective stories, now made into a film, by the late Anthony Minghela, it seems to have become a popular drink over here - a tendency, which the producers of the tea have not ignored. "This tea is for people who really appreciate tea," says Mma Ramotswe. "Ordinary tea is for everyone." Heidi and I have taken to drinking it without milk mid-morning. Heidi says she regards it as medecin, but no one makes her drink it. I have come to like it."

garden, yeast, bouncing

After some desultory gardening, I sit in the sun. The blackbirds are at it again. But this time a great tit with its two tone, electronic peeping joins in. Insects buzz.

"Fifty grams of yeast," says the white-coated, white-hatted baker at the Sainsbury bakery counter. "I'm getting to know your face every Sunday".

As we enter the Grove, rubber balls are bouncing everywhere, on the paths, on the grass. Children throw and kick them in the air, catch them, trap them with their feet. A feature of spring?

Encounter

cranes, blackbirds, climbing

A photograph in the paper of crane masts profiled against a background of fluffy clouds and blue sky, reminds me that the words for the machine and the bird are the same not just in English, but in French (grue) and Italian (gru). Presumably, in the early days of the machine, a perceived similarity gave rise to its appropriation of the word.

The two male blackbirds which, first thing in the morning, were disputing territory on the roof of the house opposite, the other day, were at it again this morning. They challenge one another on the same area of the roof and head-on in the air with the same fluttering action. Just recently I have noticed how loud is the blackbird song outside our bedroom window at dawn, and guess that it must be the same birds disputing the same territory. It is a lovely sound , so much more beautiful than its apparent purpose.

In the Grove, I watch two boys climbing a tall, difficult tree. They ascend with the steady assurance and intelligent progress of rock climbers. And it pleases me that, in an age when the game of conkers is banned in some schools because of possible dangers, and children have to wear crash helmets on their bikes, it is still possible for children to undertake adventurous activities without being nannied.

Archipeligo

From a relief map of a yet to be discovered region of an undiscovered planet in an undiscovered solar system. The blue areas are land composed largely of cobalt. The brown areas are water with a high ferrous content.

picture-making, clear spaces, read or reread

A burst of enthusiasm for pictures and patterns on surfaces, stained, scratched, cracked, peeling and crumbling, results in this morning's batch of photographs. This afternoon, as a result of seeing what I have uploaded on to the computer, I keep spotting more subjects, which I have not noticed before. The more you look the more you see. I suppose it goes on, deeper and deeper, as you begin to investigate molecular structures or sub-atomic particles hurtling towards one another at CERN.


How I enjoy having table and desk space clear! When, as a magazine editor, I had an office, my desk was always stacked with stuff; the more I cleared, the more stuff accumulated. The idea of a paperless office with everything on a wafer-thin screen remains a dream, but at least now I can have a desk and table top more or less permanently clear for action. The uncluttered surface in itself makes me feel happy.


My friend, Barrett Bonden, who is contemplating the challenge of bloggery raises the question of whether 't is better to read books for the first time or reread books which qualify as masterpieces. It makes me think, this one. I tend to agree with my friend Anna, who says that she reads for pleasure, and where pleasure leads her, there she reads. This for me means a mixture of new reading and rereading, but the emphasis is on duty-free. What do others think?

Surfaces 2

Surfaces

cowboy, everything, glow

Outside the station, a man in a cowboy hat, a satchel over his shoulder, has a tartan scarf wrapped round his face and covering his mouth. Every now and then he stops and the woman who is with him adjusts the scarf, as though he is about to be photographed.

Message on girl's tee-shirt: "I want everything".

As you come out of our house and turn right down Mount Sion, there is a view of the steep tree-covered slope of the Common. Today, in the sunshine the branches of the trees glow green with buds.

security, instructions, gardening

While Heidi is trying on a dress, I talk to the shop manager about security tags - those nasty devices which make a noise when someone tries to steal garments to which they are attached. She tells me that shoplifters are in for a shock if they manage to get nicked clothes past the sensor. Apparently when you remove a tag from a garment without the appropriate device, it bleeds ink and ruins the clothes. "But", she says "when I was working at Dickens and Jones, young men would come in wearing stolen jeans with ink all over them. They wore them with pride as a badge of honour."

Nick the electrician fits a new ceiling lamp. It is rather an awkward one to fit. "Would you like to see the instructions? " I ask. "I usually look at them afterwards" he says, which appeals to me, because that is what I tend to do, when assembling or fitting something.

Gardening: I like it for two reasons. First, because I like being in the garden. And second, I suppose because helping things that I want to grow, grow, and stopping things that I don't want to grow, from growing, invests me with a sense of power.

Gollum, black and white, 100 years

A sound, half a hiss half a growl, comes up behind us. A small boy with a thin, clever face, says: "I'm Gollum". His mother's smile is a mixture of pride and embarrassment.

Mr Crow is oh so black. Oh so white is the plastic bag, which quivers on the grass. Says Mr Crow, "I want nothing of you"; and off he flaps.

On the wall of Miles' Garage in Little Mount Sion, a sign has been painted, which reads: "Established 100 years". There would have been few cars in 1908. I like to think of those that were around being repaired at Miles, as cars of a different vintage are today. The little workshop on the corner of the road almost encapsulates the entire history of the motor car.

Barrett Bonden, checkout, chilled

For those who haven't read the books, Barrett Bonden is a character, a bosun, in the sequence of sea novels by Patrick O'Brien set at the time of the Napoleonic wars. It is also the name adopted by an old friend, who visits the shores of this blog from time to time. It was with such pleasure that I detected his pseodononymous visits that, when replying to his comment the other day (30 March), I extended the nickname into a metaphor, and ran with it. When he reflected a few days ago on the difficulty he had with enjoying gardening, I suggested that he was in fact a sea faring man, more at home on a tilting deck than in a cabbage patch. In fact he is by no means a regular sailor and I was afraid that I may have cut him off from his true personality and interests. But to day I am glad to see that he has responded to Lucy Kempton's sympathetic response to his dilemma.

The lady called Jean at the supermarket checkout is always worthwhile conversationally. "I've had may bacon and beans for breakfast and I'm set up for the day," she says in reply to my "How are you?". Not wishing to let the dialogue rest there, she says: "You wear your beret like a Frenchman," "Yes", says I, "It's a French beret."

Some friends offer us chilled Fleury with salmon at dinner the other day, demonstrating that red wine (particularly light red wine like a Beaujolais) can be served cold, and that it can also go well with fish.

the thought, spray, names

In the supermarket, I grab a bunch of tulips, and add it to the shopping. At home, it appears that the flowers are on their last legs, almost at an end of their useful life. "The thought is nice," says Heidi. We decide to discard most of the flowers and put the thought in a vase.

The buds and embryo catkins of a silver birch spread out from its branches like green spray.

Among some people's names which emerge in a Collection of Bad Baby Names by Michael Sherrod and Matthew Rayback are: Warren Peace and Chastity Beltz.

semi-colons,eight shades, weather

I like semi-colons. And I like this quote from an anonymous French grammarian: "The semi-colon is necessary; I have just proved it."

In the florist, sheets of tissue paper are hung by the corners separated into eight colours, each bundle on a separate butchers' hook. The hooks hang from a rail above a work table. I note eight colours: brown, mauve, three shades of red, orange, yellow and green. An assistant, when wrapping a bunch of flowers, pulls down a tissue, lays it on to a sheet of brown paper and folds over the edges to keep it in position . She selects a colour to match the flowers. Finally, she secures the wrapping with raffia.

Outside the window this afternoon, it grows dark. There is a sudden flash of lightening and a roll of thunder. Big drops of rain rattle against the glass and suddenly the sun comes out, though it hasn't stopped raining.

flower tea, fighting, where is it?

This morning we brew the last of the special teas which Caroline gave me for Christmas. I had saved this one because I knew it was special. It consists of light, brownish balls of leaf over which you pour boiling water. What follows is spectacular. The wrapping of leaves opens and spreads out like live seaweed swaying in the water. From the centre, next, emerges in a trickle a broadening white stain. This turns out to be composed of jasmine flowers which, following the example of the leaves, proceed to open and sway to and fro. The liquor itself is of a golden colour and lightly perfumed, and tastes all the better for the ballet performed in its making.

In the Grove there is a great kerfuffle in a bush. Two male blackbirds fly out attacking one another in the air, where Spring and territorial urges drive on their violence.

In the flower shop the telephone rings. One of the assistants darts around looking on the counter and elsewhere for the source of the ringing. Where is the phone? Everyone is laughing by now. It is in her hand and has been all the time.

seed rescue, label, reindeer

Some packets of seed, which, just a couple of weeks ago, I left in the green house in a narrow wooden box ready for sowing, have been attacked by snails. The gastropods have nibbled and digested areas of the packets in some cases rendering them useless as containers. Today, I carefully collect the seeds, which have spilt and transfer them and what remains of them in the damaged packets to white envelopes, and label each - a satisfying little chore, which has some of the charm of collecting seeds in the wild for future planting. In the process, I have to disturb one small snail still at lunch.

My memory for the names of shrubs is weak. Half way up Mount Sion, an established shrub with close-knit heads of white flowers following the line of its branches, stumps me as it did last year. Then to my pleasure I spot a garden centre label. Spirea Aguta it says. It is a plastic label with planting instructions and designation still legible after several years. I am gratful for its longevity.

Last night on BBC 2 there was a documentary film about reindeer and the Sami people of northern Norway, who accompany the herds on their annual migration. It makes me think of W H Auden's poem, The Fall of Rome which concludes with the lines:
Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.

on the look out, unexpected guide,surprises

I do not tire of watching the greedy walk of pigeons - the way their heads move from side to side as they waddle forward searching for tidbits on left and right.

Outside The Ragged Trousers in the Pantiles, a couple have a drink and meal. On the table in front of them is a guide to St Petersburg.

I seldom go anywhere without my compact camera. I take photographs on most days. Sometimes I forget what I have photographed with the result that quite often there are, as today, some pleasant surprises on the memory card, things I have completely forgotten as though someone else has been using it.

calm, horse-chestnut, bank debt

A long , slow, sad film called In the Mood for Love by the Chinese director Wong Kar-Wei, is about unrequited love. It rains a lot. Thinking about it afterwards, I enjoy the way the characters move slowly and gracefully as they go about their daily lives.

Horse chestnuts are in bud. What will eventually be white, cone-shaped candles are now little peaks of close knit, green buds. They remind me of bunches of grapes but they point up rather than down.

The clock above the door of the National Westminster bank is an hour behind the rest of us. Presumably it has been that way since the clocks were supposed to go forward on March 30. I amuse myself by trying to calculate how much time the bank would be in the red if it banked time.

melting, lips, birthday

Yesterday's snow has not yet melted this morning. It lies in a blanket on our hedge and lines the branches of trees. Dandelions and sad daffodils appear amid melting patches. The trees and gutters drip. Lumps of snow fall from rooftops and evergreen trees. Scattered through the Grove are the remains of several snowmen. Some are reduced to small, shapeless piles of snow. Other take on unintended shapes. One looks like a squirrel.

The petal of one of the tulips, which yesterday made such a striking impact in the snow, has become separated from its flowers. Lying alone and on its side, it looks like a pair of painted lips.

"That will be fifteen sixty four" says the clark in the Post Office having added up my transactions, and then adds: "Shakespeare's birthday!"

Newfoundlands, prologue, tulips

There are two Newfoundlands in the neighbourhood. Their owners usually walk them in the Grove, and the two dogs are apparently friends. But today their meeting is special. Off their leashes, they bound towards one another. Snow, you suppose, is the habitat of the breed and they seem to recognise their inheritance - two bulky black silhouettes gambolling in a field of white.

As the snow flakes race down outside the window I listen this April afternoon to Chaucer's Prologue read on CD in Middle English by Michael Bebb:
"Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote
The droughte of March hath perced to the rote..."

No, there is no escaping the snow today. That goes for an early bed of flame-like tulips where the collapsed petals, with a distinct sense of drama, spread like blood in the snow.

tabled, kaffir limes, hedonist

At the bottom of the steps, in front of a house, which has been turned into flats, is a small gueridon table. On it is a vase containing white roses.

A neighbour has made a tiny strip of garden off the twitten behind our house. Among his produce is a lemon tree, bearing three lemons, and behind it a kaffir lime tree (the leaves, and fruit which, when ripe, are about 4cm across, are popular in Thai cooking). There a two or three white, embryo fruit on the lime tree too. The lemon tree and the lime tree are sheltered by a mini-greenhouse, rather like a giant cloche, made from a plastic frame and polythene. It is light enough to be removed and positioned by hand. Inside it he has installed a small, tubular heater.

I stand under an awning to shelter from the rain, and watch a man walking up the hill, his head tilted back to catch the rain. He has a grey pigtail and a crude metal cross hangs on his chest. An aging hippy, a hedonist, he smiles to himself with sheer pleasure as the rain streams off his face.

kindness, drifts, mezzes

The kindness of people in buses who, in the absence of bus conductors, help one another identify the stop at which they want to get off.

At Groombridge Place, the daffodils, which we had come to see are almost finished, But on the bank of a stream there are drifts of wood anemone, like white shadows on the grass. And not yet in flower, ramsons or wild garlic, with their broad tulip like leaves. You find little bundles of these leaves for sale nowadays in smart food shops in towns.

"Two messes," calls the cook bringing two plates of mezze to customers outside the pub.

mirror, sawing, leeks

A mirror is left in the forecourt of a house. It surprises the world with its reflection.

The sound of sawing on the other side of a wall, this morning, tells me that my friend Milo is in his garden and still at work on his dingy.

The smell of leeks, freshly lifted from the garden, trimmed and quickly washed. They will form the basis of a leek and potato soup, perfumed with ceps.

bananas, pendant, watch dog

"Come on, banana cake, " says a mother to her dawdling child.

A slim and elegant MP3 player, without benefit of earpones or connecting wire, hangs round the neck of a woman like a piece of jewellry

A black and white dog is tied to the play ground railings on the outside. Its eyes are fixed on its owner and her small child. When the the child attempts something particularly venturesome on a small climbing frame, the dog's ears prick and its nose pushes against the bars.

covers, sunny side, bubbles

I have been looking at those covers in the street, which give access to drains, ducts, cables and the like. They could, I fantasize, be gateways to the underworld. Engraved on the wrought surfaces are the names of their manufacturers, such as Guest and Chrimes of Rotherham, Thomas Dudley Ltd.

In Calverley Precinct people drift over to the side where the sun is shining and desert entirely the shady side.

Bubbles float over a fence into the Grove and dance in the wind before vanishing.

origins, gardening, child noises

In Robert Birchfield's elegant book The English Language, I come across the derivation of the word "daffodil". Although there is no close botanical connection with the asphodels of the lilly family, the word apparently comes from "asphodel", having evolved from that into its present form, via "affodil".

There is a neighbouring front garden which (pleasing to me) is neglected. Earlier this year, violets grew profusely, and now prodigious dandelions are opening like aspiring sunflowers, as though cultivated with love and patience. In a way this garden answers Barrett Bonden's comment yesterday. A man accustomed to wind in the rigging, rope and tar, a tilting deck, the creak of rowlocks, the rudder under his hand and salt spray over his shoulder, may leave the land to landsmen, without guilt or misgiving. For want of the sailor's hand, the rose will flourish and the oak not perish.

In the garden through which I pass to get to the vegetables, I usually hear birds singing but to day the primary school up the road has its break, and the voices of school children are added to those of blackbirds and tits.

bollard, flames, territory

This bollard, with its strange markings and expressive cavity is to be found on the roadside between Mount Pleasant and the entrance to Calverley Grounds. If it were a piece of sculpture rather than a neglected parking deterrent, people would come from far away to see it and remark on its human pathos and resonance.

In a flower bed in the front garden of a house in Belgrove, are some red tulips, which, now that their petals have opened and become loose, resemble flames.

Mr Crow, in the Grove, is enjoying the softness of the ground after the rain. Head in the air, he waddles up and down, no longer showing any interest in searching for worms. Instead, it is the pleasure of territory which he enjoys. "Mine, mine mine," he says to himself. And nobody challenges him.

wear, narcissi, strimmer

This morning I think that I like the effects of age and long usage on artifacts and people too: the handles of tools polished by use; blades frequently honed; stone and wooden steps, worn down by many footfalls; the fine cracks under the sheen of old leather; and the lines of experience and weather on the faces of old people.

Some narcissi from the WI Market were closed when brought home. Now fully open, their pale petals boldly sport dark orange trumpets.

The on-off growling of a strimmer, as as ear-muffed gardener trims the grass round the boles of trees in the Grove, is a sort of Spring song.

relief, moss, water

In the doctor's waiting room a radio, chained to the wall, is gushing ersatz cheerfulness. It's Radio 2, as the horrible jingle keeps reminding you. I am trying to do a sudoku. Reading is out of the question. An elderly lady who is sitting next to the radio, with a single movement of her finger, switches it off. I look up. "You don't mind?" she says, half apologetically. " Mind? Thank you!" I say. Florence Nightingale herself could not have offered greater relief.

I notice on the top of a wall, at eye-level, a flourishing colony of moss. Little stalks, topped with spore bearing capsules, project a centimeter upwards from the green bed like flowers, only, as I learn subsequently from a reference book, they are not flowers. I think I have always had a soft spot for moss as it does for those who have cause to settle down upon it.

After the rain, the sun comes out. As I walk in the Grove, I hear the sound of water dripping from the trees and overflowing from the guttering of a house, and watch a stream flowing down the brick culverts at the edge of a path. The water is clean and bright in the sunlight.

penny royal, flying, hyacinths

A pot of penny royal from the WI market, will keep the summer sweet. Its Latin name is Menta Pulegium, and it is a variety of mint, possibly the most highly scented of all mints. Says Culpeper: "It is beneficial in cases of spasms, hysteria, flatulence and sickness, being very warming and grateful to the stomach."

In Calverley Ground, I see a squirrel leap from one tree to another. For a moment it is flying.

After days of cold winds, the sun appears and you can feel it warm on your face. The warmth draws out the scent of hyacinths in the flower beds outside the town hall.

reflections, daffodils persist, ITMA

The reflections of passers-by in shop windows seem in some ways more interesting and worth exploring than the passers-by themselves.

Daffodils and other spring flowers, which appeared earlier than usual this year, have, perhaps because of the cold weather, lasted longer than usual. That other daffodil poem - by Robert Herrick - which begins "Fair daffodils we weep to see you haste away so soon," is thereby contradicted. I shan't be so sorry this year when eventually they haste away.

In the window of a charity shop is a little piece of history. It is a faded box of old, 12-in records of ITMA, the radio show which nearly everyone in the country listened to during World War II. The dates 1939 -1949 are given and there is a drawing of the star of the show Tommy Handley on the label. I don't know what such things are worth, but for a collector, it strikes me that the price, £50, would not be a lot to pay.

mustard, toboggan, celandine

Lunch with some old mates. Our host, a former hotelier, offers us smoked salmon with mustard. It was, he says, a combination favoured by Ella Fitzgerald.

Outside the garden shop in Chapel Place, is an old, weathered toboggan. But, despite forecasts, a biting wind and a few dramatic flurries, there is still no snow.

The leaves of lesser celandine, everywhere else in flower, are pushing through in the triangular shrubbery known locally as the Village Green. This is despite the efforts of the council gardeners who tried to eradicate the flowers in the Autumn. They prefer, it seems, bare earth, reminiscent of formal parks and gardens. But, with luck, we shall still see the golden star-shaped flowers this Spring.

ripenning, jewels, scars

"A man is much inclined to find merit in those black eyes which can ripen fruit upon which they look.." From Mémoires des deux jeunes mariées Honoré de Balzac.

The snow flakes, although they do not settle as snow, leave little droplets on the grass which glitter in the sun.

The scars on trees where branches have been pruned look like features on a human face - staring eyes, gaping mouths. The colours and textures of the exposed and weathered wood add expression to these shapes.

daffodils, hollow loaf, snow flakes

Following the discussion inspired by Lucy Kempton's daffodil montage, I have been thinking about the poem and the flowers that inspired it. Tall Girl says by way of comment that the consensus of her writers' group is that you can't put a daffodil in a poem at all nowadays. I know what they mean but all the same I say to myself:
Bloody daffodils
Buds probe the air, hungry as birds beaks,
Or poised, the shape of fish, in green shadow,
To shoot after prey in a brazen flash;
Trumpets that gape, bold, frilled with snarls,
That Satchmo himself might learn to blow;
Mad rhythms of dancing, empty heads;
The rumble and tap of their sequestered feet
Underground, where they, from sand and rock,
Draw strength to scream like Dionysus' girls,
In this violent, unstoppable, cruel time.

A loaf is left too long to prove. The baked loaf looks alright, but reveals a gaping hollow under the crust when the first slice is taken, like the empty loft of a house.

For a few minutes big snow flakes fall, but not for long. I go to the front door to photograph them falling against the hedge and bay tree. But they melt away on contact with the ground. "Où sont les neiges d'antan!"

daisy, autobiography, stories

Why do I get so much pleasure this morning from discovering (or rather rediscovering, for I am sure that I have met it before) that the French word for daisy is pâquerette? I cannot tell, but in a curious way the little white flower is born again in my mind.

Following the fashion for six-word autobiographies, here is mine: I looked and looked and look.

The two bookshops in Chapel Place, The Oxfam bookshop and Hall's, are full of people browsing and chatting to escape from the rain, hail and snow, all of which are taking turns outside this afternoon. In Hall's, Sabrina, the owner and David, a neighbour are reminiscing about Calverley Grounds, the larger of the two neighbouring parks. In particular, they recall a couple of years ago, a one eyed fox called The Major. The park keeper had tamed him, and he used to sit around on his haunches like a dog. He would sometimes go into people's houses, and once nicked a Kit Kat bar from someone's table.

clock-view, greeting, daffodils

From the Grove I realize that I am on a level with the stations clock, which I can see and which nowadays tells the right time.

The sound of visitors being greeted as I pass an open front door, where two or three people in overcoats are bunching before going in. "Lovely to meet you," says a woman's voice. In the backgound is a man with a friendly, smiling face.

Sprays of broom with buds like yellow scales.

reality, ball, crow

"The universe is such a strange and wonderful place that reality will always outrun the wildest imagination. There will always be things unknown and perhaps unknowable." The late Arthur C Clarke.

This morning against the base of a wall, I spot the remains of a tennis ball. It is cut open and a tuft of its soft covering sticks up like an ear. It reminds me of the West Country, nature photographer, Johny Kingdom, who, the other night on TV, showed how he had cut open a tennis ball and left it suspended in the woods in the hope that a dormouse might nest in it.

In the Grove I meet an artist friend, who tells me that she has been watching a crow chasing a squirrel round a tree. I realize that it is the crow I call Mr Crow, who, as she speaks is waddling across the grass with Mrs Crow not far off. "I've never seen a crow chasing a squirrel," she says. I explain that Mr Crow owns the Grove and has to keep the squirrels and others in order.

1000 posts, red tail, tea stain

Post number 1000 in this web log means that I have now managed to note, on an almost daily basis, 3000 beautiful things or at least, things "counter, original, spare, strange", that have touched, amused or interested me and I hope done the same for visitors to the site.

Through the crack in the top of a desk-drawer, a red tail betrays the presence of a ball of red string.

Teas stains are always good value. On a yellow post-it note, a sepia stain from a tea cup needs only a dot for an eye, three lines to make a snout, and I have a bear's head,

Daffodils, strange language, conscience

The discussion on daffodils and Wordsworth's poem on the subject, which followed Lucy's montage in her blog http://www.boxelder.blogspot.com/, sets me thinking. I had forgotten until this morning that the source of the poem is to be found in the diary of William's remarkable sister Dorothy. Her entry for April 15 1802 reads:
"...We saw a few daffodils close to the waterside, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them. They looked so gay ever glancing ever changing."The poem was not written until 1804. William we are told, in this context, would often make Dorothy read out a passage from her journal to revive his memory. For merit and freshness Dorothy's words may seem, in our less polished age, to have the edge over her brother's.

The ink from the roller ball pen on one page of my note book was not dry when I closed the book . An interesting script appears on the opposite page. What does it say, in what language, belonging to what beings, in what remote corner of the universe?

Someone shouts across the road at a parking meter attendant, who is busy noting car numbers: How do you sleep at night?" Horlicks," says the meter man. Disarmed by his sense of humour, the hostile note dissappears. "Something a bit strong in it, I expect," laughs his antagonist.

feet, stained glass, rain

Through a window half obscured by a lowered blind I see, from the street, a pair of feet in trainers resting on a coffee table. Beside the feet is a pint tankard, half full. Opposite, in the otherwise, bare room, a television screen against the wall.

On one side of the Compasses pub is a window, in the centre of which is a circular area of burgundy, stained glass, edged by a ring of lead. I had not noticed this detail until I passed it this afternoon. In the centre of the circle is the pub's insignia, a pair of compasses, in lead relief.

I sit beside the window with a book. Every now and then I look up to see the rain, faint against the bay tree and the hedge behind it. On the wisteria, raindrops hang at regular intervals.

territory, triumph, ballet

Two blackbirds on the roof of the house opposite, this morning, dispute territory. One sits on the chimney stack while the other marches up and down on the ridge of the roof. Every now and then, the roof-walker hops on to the tiles, then back on to the ridge. Suddenly both birds fly up in to the air, peck vainly at one another in mid-air, and return to the front line.

In one of his mysterious, densely structured Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges describes an imaginary novel, where one of two antagonists will not refute the sophisms of his opponent "so as not to be right in a triumphal fashion."

In the Grove, this afternoon, I stand still for a moment, look around me and listen. There seems to be a ballet in progress. Children on swings; families strolling with and without push chairs, each at a different pace; boys throwing balls at one another, turning, diving and catching; dogs scampering, birds on the wing, in the wings. The music is provided by the shouts and cries of children, the gruff calls of adults, the song of birds. The choreography is self-defining.

car-cruncher, herrings, red cardigan

I read with satisfaction about a the fossilised remains of a 50ft long marine reptile found in Svalbard in the Arctic circle. The creature, which lived 150 million years ago, apparently had teeth the size of swords. According to the paleontologist Dr Jorn Hurum of the University of Oslo, it would have been able to pick up a car in its jaws and crunch it in half.

Surveying the label, this lunchtime, on a container of sweet pickled herrings (one of my favourite things to eat, because, in the right mood, they make me imagine I'm a sea gull), I read, under the heading "Allergy Advice", the simple statement, "Contains fish".

The story of the red cardigan. I have, for many years, owned a red, woollen cardigan. It is a comfort garment for cold evenings. For a long time, I could not bring myself to use it, because it reminded me of an unsympathetic sub-editor, who, on arriving in the office, would, every day, put on a garment, which happened to be of the same colour. I think it must have been to save wear and tear on his suit, an indication of his Dickensian malignity and compulsive meanness. As time went by my memory of the sub-editor faded, and I went back to my cardigan. It has since become a favorite again. So much so that a vast hole has appeared in one of its sleeves, something I am prepared to live with. Not Heidi. She can see the hole while I, the wearer, can only feel my elbow sticking through it. So last night she cobbles the hole and can look at the me without shuddering at her ragged consort. Now she threatens to look for a new one. But new clothes are never the same. Old ones with their associations and familiarity, their knowledge of your protrusions and inclinations, are irreplaceable.

risotto, waking, clear

The chicken we roasted on Sunday serves four people. There is cold chicken for the two of us on the next day and yesterday a risotto made from the stock. The risotto rice is gradually swollen with hot stock. It is dressed with a mixture of dried ceps and fresh cultivated mushrooms stewed in butter and a little dry Madeira. A fitting end to this generous bird.

Wake this morning to the song of blackbirds.

Satisfaction this afternoon at having cleared a line of books that has accumulated on my desk. Now only two stand by - Chambers Dictionary and Petit Larousse.

lamppost, laisser passer, donated

This morning, as I watch the lamppost outside our window swaying in the wind, I remember, or think I remember, a lamppost in the film Gone with the Wind. I may have got it wrong, but it is, I think Vivian Leigh, who, overcome with grief or anger, at one point, runs down the steps of a town house and stops her onward rush by holding on to a lamppost. The lamppost sways and, until today, when I see our own lamppost sway in a similar way, I think, quite mistakenly, that it reveals a weakness of the film set, which the director has not spotted.

There is a pedestrian crossing controlled by traffic-lights on the route which links the traffic free Pantiles with the traffic free Chapel Place. The pavement is very narrow, and this afternoon a crocodile of well behaved, nicely chattering French school children, queues to get across obstructing other pavement users. Coming up behind, a school teacher shepherds the children to one side against a railing, "laisser passer, laisser passer," he shouts at them. I make my way to the edge of the crossing as the lights change. "Vite, vite, vite " says the teacher, and then to me: "Sorry! You're not one of our kids." "Quel dommage," I say.

Jorge Luis Borges is one of may favourite authors and his little (in size) book Ficciones is the one which I might well choose to take with me to a desert island. The short stories, complex explorations of mind, language and culture, are so dense, that they can be read again and again.
My current copy of the book is published by Everyman as part of its Millennium Library. The publishers gave complete sets of its titles on the occasion of the millennium to a number of schools for their libraries. Unfortunately many schools saw no use for these handsome editions, and sold them on. Mine has the stamp of Bradbourne School, Sevenoaks on the fly leaf. It is otherwise in pristine state. There is no sign of any child having opened it. In the preface by John Sturrock, I read; Something to be remembered about Borges, even in the casual context of a preface, is that he used so few words that all of them must be attended to." That no one at Bradbourne School attended to any of his words, may have appealed to the ironical, searching multi-layered mind of the author.

page 123, customers, mistake

In response to Lucy's wheeze of quoting the sixth, seventh and eighth sentence on page 123 of a book you happen to be reading, here goes:
"O Wazir," broke in the other, "this old man is in his dotage. He does not know what he says. I alone killed her and must pay the penalty."
The provenance may be a give away. If anyone is in doubt I can reveal it later. I am supposed to tag five others in the hope that they will take up this interesting exercise. I'm sorry, Lucy I can just about muster four suitable people with access to the internet: Lucas, the poet; Barrett Bonden, the nautical man; Tristan, the cavalier of the road, and Clare, originator of the three beautiful things theme for bloggers. The mechanical procedure of tagging defeats me, but I hope that they may pick this up, and pursue it in one way or another. It should make an interesting anthology.

"Customers wanted. No previous experience needed." So reads a billboard outside the Mind charity ship in the High Street.

In the post office where the queue is long and irritable, a little girl suddenly hugs me round the legs. "Wrong person, darling", says her mother.