tree towers

vapour trails, pine kernals, sitting in the sun

I watch a plane leave a vapour trail in the clear blue sky. There are two white tracks which gradually break up and form strips of cloud before vanishing, long after the plane has gone.

Almost the best part of the weekly bread bake, is adding pine kernals and pumpkin seeds to the strong white flour and rye dough. The seeds add a nutty, slightly aromatic flavour to the bread. The seeds, which end up on the outside of the loaf, are toasted during baking and especially delicious.

There are several people, apart from us, sitting in the Pantiles enjoying the January sun.

bye bye, falling strawberries, humming truck

As I approach the Grove, I hear a little girl saying "bye bye". She waves as she follows her mother out of the park. Who or what is she saying goodbye to? As I come level with the corner, I see that it is a cat, which sits on the grass, and looks bored, though possibly relieved to be left on its own.

A group of noisy, elderly women on an outing invade Smiths, the Greengrocers, where you help yourself to the produce and pay at a checkout desk. One lady with a pronounced Welsh accent and a note of hysteria in her voice stands over a stack of strawberries. "Where's the man? she shouts as she hangs on to the stack of boxes. "Where's the man? The strawberries are falling!"

I like the little, electric tractors called Workhorses, which they use in maintaining the Grove.They are satisfyingly compact with a spacious hopper and move with a quiet, purposeful hum.

child peacock, old couple, Mr Crow

I hear a peacock in the street. It turns out, to my disappointment, to be a very small baby.

An old couple walk past the cafe where I am sitting. He wears a flat cap; she, her white hair short and clinging to the curve of her skull. The both have red, zip jackets. They are a little unsteady on their feet and hold hands.

The crow, which has been pecking at the grass, flies into a tree and begins to makes its cawing noise. It stretches it neck forward and moves its head up and down with the effort. It is violent and unrelenting, But its enemy, if there is one, cannot be seen. Some squirrels and a magpie on the grass beneath the tree, take no notice.

flying, yorkshire terriers, tulip tree

In Sainsbury's a little girl takes advantage of a temporary open space in front of the fish counter, and slides on her wheeled shoes, while, at the same time, tossing a toy glider into the air.

A husband and wife sit at a table outside a cafe in the Pantiles. A Yorkshire terrier sits on each of their laps.

I cannot see the lower part of the tulip tree, which greets me every morning when I raise the blind of our bedroom window. This afternoon I cross the road and peep over the wall to remind myself of its size and scope. At first it appears to be three trees, but its apparent that three hefty trunks rise from the same rootstock. A few years ago the tree was in a bad way, and some agile tree-surgeons spent a morning pruning it heavily. For a while its amputated branches were not a pretty sight, but now they seem to have recovered, and, and at this time of year, you can see that the bare branches are flourishing. One of the tree surgeons said at the time that it would not survive without the surgery.

connubial calm, new word wanted, mist

Two doves sit side by side on a branch of the lime tree, a picture of connubial calm.

The other day I was seduced by the French word patatras, which caught my eye when I was looking for a completely different word. It refers to the sound made by the impact of a falling object. An English translation could be crash, but it lacks the onomatopeoic element. Imagine someone dropping a tray of china and cutlery on a staircase. Patatras suggests the reverbaration, as bits and pieces tumble and settle. Crash does not. I spotted patatras only by happy chance. Serendipity, you might say. But I am looking for a more specific word for such chance encounters in a dictionary. Any ideas?

Mist clears slowly this morning. From the Grove, I look, in the gaps between the houses of adjacent streets , at the trees on the Common. They are no more than grey shadows, their branches like scratches on a dusty window.

Better than bad, not waving but cleaning, pale sun

Saga magazine has, it seems, invented someone called Joe Tynam, who apparently has a blog called Now is the Time. So it seems that we have a lot in common, apart from similar names. I am getting to know Tynam and enjoy some of his observations. Here's Tynams latest: "I do not think of anyone as totally bad, but do believe that some people are a lot better than others".

I am watching a squirrel, who is watching me, when out of the corner of my eye, I see someone wave from a window. But what I take to be a wave turns out to be a hand cleaning the inside of the window with a cloth. The squirrel and I resume our mutual appraisal.

A layer of cloud this afternoon veils the sun, so that you can look it without the accustomed glare. It could be the moon, but it is too bright for that, and you know that it sits in the sky, where the sun usually is at this time of day and time of year. It looks like a round peppermint that has been reduced to a thin disc.

shoe story, snowdrops, stepping-stones

In a blog, onestepatatime-sara.blogspot.com, Sara has the brilliant idea of photographing her feet and several pairs of footwear in separate pictures. The result is an unusual but fascinating self-portrait. Today I go back to it for a second look, and note a pair of black slippers identical with a pair I have had for some years.

In the WI Market, there are bunches of snowdrops. Each is complete with roots and balls of earth, and is contained in a small plastic bag. I carry the snowdrops home through the snow.

The melting snow has left a series puddles on the narrow paths in the Grove. The low sun catches these and turns them into a series of mirrors, gleaming stepping-stones along the uneven tarmac.

snow on wire, cheerful man, yes dear.

A centimeter or so of snow lies on the telephone wire outside the bedroom window. At eye-level it looks like a narrow ridge of mountains.

A cheerful man appears to be greeting people in the street, but he is not looking at anyone in particular. You cannot hear what he says, if he says anything. But he smiles, raises one arm in the air , makes a thumbs-up sign, or spreads both his arms in a gesture of welcome. People think he is addressing them, and then look away when they realize he isn't, disappointed or perhaps relieved.

Says Mr Crow: "this is my grove of trees;
I strut here to peck my lunch from the soft ground.
It is mine and, Mrs Crow, you are my Eve".
"Yes, dear," says she.
"But when I fly with my black, heavy wings,
Up to that tree, Mrs Crow, and look beyond,
I see the world, and that too, is mine".
"Yes dear", says she.

recognition, new word, news

Spotting someone you know in the distance whom you recognise not by their features but by their posture and gait.

"Kweedle" is the winner of a comptetion for a new word in the BBC 4 programme Word of Mouth. It means to lean back in a chair and rock backwards and forwards. It was submitted to the progamme by Kathy Desmond.

In a cafe I see a man reading his stars in a tabloid newspaper, while sucking on a cigarette. He folds the paper and offers it to me. As I am about to leave I say "no thanks." "Nothing special," he says with a smile.

larger and smaller, snow, happy

The Google website offers a Buddhist thought for the day. One recent thought appeals: " One side will make you smaller; the other side will make you larger". The source is Lewis Carol's Alice in Wonderland.

Today, the cold rain suddenly turns to large flakes of snow floating in the wind outside the window. Indoors, I see on TV Andy Murray narrowly lose to Rafael Nadal in the Australian Open Tennis Tournament in sweltering Melbourne.

Another felicitous phrase from Fortunata y Jacinta by Perez Galdos: "The news made her happy as a couple of castanets."

veggie hopes, smile day, wallnut oil

Overheard in Sainsbury's:
He: Maybe they'll have vegetarian sausages or something.
She: The don't make vegeterian sausages.

Tomorrow, January 21, is reckoned,by those who know that sort of thing, to the most miserable day of the year. National-Be-Miserable Day? But it's reassuring to think that it's not compulsory.

A guest brings a litre bottle of wonderful wallnut oil. It comes from Huilerie J Le Blanc of Iguerande in the upper the Loire Valley. For a start, it inspires a salad with warm goat-cheese and a few wallnut halves to be liberally dressed with it.

Hi there, wrong address, crow

A man in a red dressing gown looks out of his ground floor window on to Mt Sion. He is talking to a telephone. As I pass , I hear his say"Hi there" into it.

I am reading Fortunata and Jacinta, a long sprawling novel about life in Madrid, by the 19th century, Spanish novelist, Perez Galdos. While it is not notable for its narrative drive it has some good moments. I particularly enjoy the observation by the do-gooder Guilermina to her playboy nephew, ..." and besides, it's bad for you to be always travelling around like a letter with the wrong address on it".

Crow on top branch
Opens his beak, says ca-argh.
A black hole is born.

rules, butterfly again, paths

To my collection of notices, which I am calling "signs for the times", I take pleasure in adding this, copied down as printed, from outside the loos in my favourite pub in Tunbridge Wells:

These Toilets are single
occupancy only

If two or more people are found using
them, they will be asked to leave the
premises

Also
Gentlemen if you must use the ladies
Loo please respect them by improving
your aim and leaving the seats down
when finished

Every few days this January, I see a butterfly, not, I am sure, the same one, but surely worthy of note. This one seemed in a hurry as it fluttered up Sutherland Road.


I like the mysterious way rough footpaths wind their way up the steep slopes of the Common, from where it comes down to the main road, and lose themselves in the tangle of trees and undergrowth on the way up.

Tree in pavement

black and white, wind power, french french

If I took a colour photograph from our bedroom window this morning, it would appear to be a black and white photograph. Even the evergreen leaves in the distance behind the tulip tree appear to be grey.

A big wind today.It is enjoyable to walk through it, swaying and steadying oneself, as though drunk.

The French dictionary, which I picked up the other day at Hall's bookshop, is proving to be an unexpected pleasure when reading in bed. It has almost entirely taken the place of the Cassell's French English dictionary, which I have been using continuously for the last four or five years. Reading defintions in French rather than going from French to English, is a little slower, but enhances the constant sense of discovery, which is part of the pleasure I get from reading in French. It is Le Robert micro poche. Micro it may be but it manages to include anlalogies, synonyms and antonyms in its defintions, while remaining comfortable to handle.

flickering sun, snowdrops, puddles

After this morning's rain the sun comes out and, low in the sky, comes through the leaves of the bay tree outside the window and flickers, almost like candlelight, on the oak table top.

Snowdrops appear in the Grove.

A good day for puddles: they seem to be windows into another world, a sepia world, which tremble at the least disturbance.This afternoon I photograph reflections of a beech hedge, and the excommunicated branches of trees.

Deserted, hortensia, walking in the rain

In the deserted Grove this afternoon, only Mr and Mrs Crow strut on the grass, and over there a magpie drops in, while the trees are fruited with whistling starlings, heartened by the soft rain.

Hortensia or Hortense seems to be quite a common girls name in France. But, unlike other names of flowers -Lilly or Iris for example - it has not been adopted in England. And not surprisingly: who would want to be called Hydrangea, which is the English translation of hortensia?

Walking in the rain is always a pleasure especially when wearing a waterproof jacket and a broad-brimmed leather hat, and when the rain is a gentle mizzling rain, as it is this afternoon.

postman wit, window reflects, thin ice

"Just in time," I say as I hand a letter to the postman who is collecting the mail from the letter box. "I thought I was one short," he says.

The glass of the bay windows of the Pizza Express in the High Street, formerly the National Westminster Bank, has been replaced by reflective glass. It is convex on the outside, and mirrors people looking in, but allows patrons inside to look out, their view unimpeded. From outside you have to press your face against the glass to see shadowy figures inside.

From the York Courant, 15 January 1748 : "It is estimated that no less than a dozen persons have lost their lives in this last week, by inadvisedly skating upon this ice, which broke and drowned them: whereof five expired at one time, within sight of some fifty spectators in St James's Park."

squirrel on the roof, seagull flock, twins on bikes

A squirrel appears on a roof, climbs the chimney stack and peeps down the chimney, as might you or I.

I've seen a number of seagulls recently over Tunbridge Wells, but usually in pairs or on their own. This afternoon a small flock- eight or nine - wheel over Mount Sion while, above them, a small private plane banks in the sun, becoming part of a fleeting aeronautic composition.

Two small boys, obviously twins, are learning to ride new bicycles. They are helped by their parents, each of whom hangs on to the saddle of one of them. The boys have identical orange bikes, and both wear crash helmets.

old friend,winter butterfly, mustard

I bump into a former neighbour who comes home for a cup of tea and stays for a bottle of wine.

A brown butterly flutters past me in Sutherland Road. It is January 13th.

In Sankey's bar there is a collection of old advertisement signs. One reads: Eat Coleman's mustard with our prime beef, mutton etc and enjoy them more." Another: "Lyle Superior Quality Lemonade Ginger Beer". Reflections of a simpler age.

light, padding, follow the van

The sun, low in the sky, comes off the wet tarmac, this afternoon, with a blinding light.

A group of clouds for a few minutes pack the sky like the padding of an eiderdown.

Reading an account of the cockney music hall singer, Marie Lloyd in The Victorians by A N Wilson. I note for the first time the significance of her famous song:

"My old man said follow the van
And don't dilly dally on the way.
Off went the cart with me home packed in it,
I followed on with my old cock linnet - but
I dillied, I dallied, I dallied and I dillied,
Lost me way and don't know where to roam
Who's going to put up the old iron bedstead
If I can't find my way home.

It is, Wilson points out, about "being evicted, piling ones few pathetic belongings on to a cart and getting drunk", a humorous but sad comment on the poverty in the slums at the end of the nineteenth century.

sunshine, idea, shark in window

After two or three days of unremitting rain, the sunshine this afternoon is a pleasure which you cannot take for granted.

The assistant at the chemist remarks that she is glad to settle back to normality after Christmas. "Sometimes, I think, " she says, "why not have Christmas every two years?"

I see a shark swimming in a shop window and quickly realize that it is a shark on a giant televison screen.

camellia, wind, fruit and veg

A pink camellia is already in flower in a neighbouring street.

The wind whirls through the branches above the Grove like invisible traffic.

The newagent in Grove Hill Road hasn't been slow to take advantage of the closure of the Morrison's supermarket by the station. Since before Christmas it has been displaying fruit and vegetable outside the double-fronted shop. Today in the rain, the oranges, onions, melons, and sprouts on stalks present a cheering sight.

olives, dark matter, pyracantha

After finishing Les Soleil des Scorta by Laurent Gaudé, there remains in my head this lyrical account of olives: "'They are made of gold,' said his uncle, 'Those who say that we are poor, have never eaten a crust of bread, dipped into our oil. It is like taking a bite from our hillsides . It smells of stone and of sun. It is beautiful, thick, unctuous, our olive oil. It is the blood of our land.'"

The best bit of news today is the announcement, by Dr Richard Massey of the California Institute of Technology, of the first three dimensional map of dark matter - the invisible material that makes up at least 80% of the universe. "A filamentary web of dark matter is threaded through the entire universe," he explains, " and acts as a scaffolding within which the ordinary matter - including stars, galaxies and planet, are built."

The seeds of pyracantha are bright in the rain this afternoon and seem to be lit from within.

theory, sunday smells, pink onions

Heidi remembers meeting her grandfather when he was rather the worse for wear, trying with difficulty to get his front door key into the lock, and saying: "Theoretically I'm already in bed".

In the blustery wind this afternoon, a whiff of Sunday-lunch.

Some small, firm, slightly pink, slightly sweet onions from Brittany called Rosé de Roscoff.

floating, wisdom, small game

Christmas is over, but above the concourse of Charring Cross Station, a gas-filled balloon in the shape of Father Christmas, bobs against the netting stretched below the roof to keep pigeons away. The string, to which a child's hand must recently have clung, hangs forlorn below the balloon.

Small boy: I want to get on that train.
Mother: We don't know where it's going.
Small boy: I do.

My sister-in-law, who lives in Norwich, says she saw a notice outside a fish and game merchant, which announced: "Whole raw tigers for Christmas".

high point, time saved, smoked salmon

There is a plaque in the Grove, which reminds visitors that the little tree-crowded park was once a high point in the surrounding countryside, " a highly visible landmark". Then, as now, it consisted of a group of trees. But the trees were "well established" then - no longer so since the storm of 1987. And you realise that the Grove's visibility from afar, too, has been limited by encroaching streets of houses, while the view from the park is now obstructed by rooftops. Happily the trees, replanted after the storm, are growing taller, and the Grove is taking on its former shape of a leafy copse.

A mistake in my sudoku is not worth trying to correct and finish, so I listen to some Bach and read Montaigne on pedantry, instead.

A smoked salmon sandwich made with fresh rye bread, cream cheese, a squeeze of lemon and a dusting of paprika.

kite, bear friend, abandoned

In the Grove, Caroline on her last day with us, flies what is claimed to be the smallest kite in the world; it measures about three inches by two inches and has two tails; caught by the gusty wind, it soars up into the sunshine.

Giles, who owns the house, with a window, where a life sized bear ( recently featured here) looks down on to the Grove, greets me from the neighbouring window. "Can I be in your blog too?" he says.

Normal service is resumed. Guests have departed. Shoppers carry ordinary plastic bags, now that the conjoined feasts of Christmas and the Sales are over. The decorations in the High Street hang desolately in the damp air, and a discarded Christmas tree lies across the waste bin at the entrance to Chapel Place. A charming melancholy presides.

tourists, time, cheese

Two tourists pass us going up as we go down Mt Sion. I know they are tourists because one of them holds in his hand a familiar, buff coloured leaflet. The leaflet describes the buildings (once boarding houses and brothels) that were built in Mount Sion in the early days of Tunbridge Wells. The spa town of today was developed from rough heathland, in the 17th Century, on account of the supposedly health-giving spring discovered there. The tourists stop in front of one of the houses listed on their route, and proceed up hill with an enlightened look on their faces.

I read a newspaper article about time by the philosopher, Julian Baggini. He expounds on Immanuel Kant's belief that: "the best way to view time and space is not to see them as features of reality that the mind tries to comprehend, but as features of the mind, which are used to comprehend reality."

In the Pantiles, two women hand Caroline a camera and ask her to take a photograph of them. They pose and one says to the other "say cheese", and they say "cheese" in chorus.

hungry ghosts, slowing down, chillis

Caroline talks about the hungry ghost realm in bhuddist belief - one of the six realms of rebirth. Here desires are never satisfied. The hungry ghosts cannot eat as their throats are as narrow as pins, but their stomachs are as large as drums.

The pleasure of doing things deliberately and slowly.

On the doorstep of a ground floor flat is a withered chilli plant. Bright red chillis hang from it, waiting, you imagine, to be incorporated into a spicy stir-fry or a curry.

slang, damn fool question, don't kick him

These may possibly come in useful. Two items of French slang for pubic hair: cresson, literally cress; and persil, literally parsley.

In today's paper, I read an account of a banquet at the Elysee Palace written by the BBC correspondent, Caroline Wyatt. At the reception line, she was welcomed first by Jaques Chirac, then by the Queen, who asked her what she did in Paris. "On being told", writes Wyatt, "the Queen replied: 'How fascinating!' So I asked her how she was enjoying her visit, only to receive a sharp rebuke from Prince Philip. 'Damn fool question,' he barked, as the Queen gave him a mildly reproachful look."

In Sainsbury's a small boy throws himself to the floor. "Don't kick him, " says his mother. "Just leave him there."

willowherbe 2

perspective, daffodil shoots, rain

This morning I think: the daily habit of looking out for positive, beautiful or amusing things, could be thought of as an escape from reality. But far from ignoring the ugly and the cruel, it puts them in their place.

In the Grove, daffodil shoots are begining to show. I see an iris in flower in a nearby garden.

Rain beats again the window pane this afternoon and buffets the bay tree outside. It's pleasant to read beside the window and listen to the rain.

getting on, sewed up, flower seeds

As we get older, from time to time one of us asks the other: "Are you all right?" Touching or pathetic?

In the tiny Retoucherie outlet in the London Road (it is a franchise chain, which makes alterations and repairs clothes), there is a sliding door, which opens into a minute cubicle. The other side of the cubicle has access from the workshop. While we are waiting for an on-the-spot repair, I see a woman disappear into the cubicle, and wonder aloud whether she is to be shortened or patched up. "Just a quick lippo-suction," says a voice from inside the cubicle.

Flower seeds continue to fascinate. The other day, I photograph a rosebay willowherb on the Common. It seems to have attained a magnificence in its last days, quite different from its youth but no less impressive, before dispersing its progeny.

rosebay willowherb

texting, crayons, starlings

Overcoming a reluctance to send text messages produces a frisson. "Textophobia conquered" is the headline. Both my children and their families, one lot in Dorset and one in the Pyrenees, had Christmas greetings in text and I received their replies. Now I mst learn 2 use the lingo.

Chunky crayons made of twigs in the window of the children's shop in the High Street catch my eye. I didn't like crayons when I was a child but love them now exorbitantly, particularly the sort which you can moisten, so that your marks become water colours, your drawings paintings.

At this time of year, starlings begin to gather in larger quantities in the Grove. Last year at the same time I began to note their presence, and this year find myself doing the same thing. A Christmas book called Garden Bird Songs and Calls, which includes a CD, allows me to listen to the song at home, and the written description nicely captures the sound in words : "Generally beginning with a medley of mimicry, with possibly a few 'signature' whistles as a prelude, the pace builds into passages of rapid bill-clicking, repeated shrill whistles and throaty wheezes".

few people, exoplanets, weimaraner

There are few people in Sainsbury's today and how pleasing it is. Few is beautiful.

Exoplanets are planets, which belong to solar systems other than our own, and which might consist of rock and even water. Apparently a satellite mission is just now being launched to study them. It is a pleasure to read such stories in the newspaper.

In the Grove we meet an elegant German hunting dog called a weimaraner. It introduces us to its owner. Apparently it has been descibed as "the dog with the human brain".

happiness, topinabour, Pam Ayres

On Christmas morning I hear a discussion programme on the subject of happiness. One of those present quotes some familiar words - "All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.." She didn't acknowldege the source but they come from Eliot's Four Quartets, and without fail they instill in me a sense of deep calm.

I come across, in a French book on vegetables, a reference to le topinambour. The article begins: "It is only for us septuagenerians that a too often eaten "legume de guerre" can still be of interest today". I am not sure of the truth of that statement. Jerusalem artichokes make a fine soup and can be roasted or boiled and served wrapped in bacon to good effect, war time food or not. But I do know that French chefs are not fond of this relative of the sunflower. A once famous French chef, once bet me £25 that the word topinabour referred to the globe artichcoke. I took him on, and he had the good grace to ring me up the next day to confirm that I was right, but the bad grace not to mention the bet.

Listening to the voice of Pam Ayres, with its amused and michievous rustic swing, on a CD. She intoduces her poems with anecdotes, which add to their wit when she comes to recite them. Even though I have heard them all before - the account of having a wisdom tooth extracted is but one which comes to mind - the poems make me laugh out loud even when I think about them. During her recitations,there is something about the way she looks for the right word, finds it and then relishes it, as though it is some special item of food, which seems close to genius.

Happy Christmas

word needed, persiflage, recipe-talk

A word is needed to describe what happens when you bump into a word by chance in a dictionary. It could be a word you know or one who don't. What counts is that it catches your eye as you turn the pages in pursuit oif something else. Serendipity would do, but it is refers to any chance discovery.

I have always had a weakness for persiflage, which I tripped over in the dictionary last night. It comes from the French word, which is spelt the same way, means the same thing and is pronounced as though it were French. It means to banter and talk in a frivolous manner -something, which I am fond of doing, especially if I can find another persifleur to persiflate with. Both derivatives are in the Oxford English Dictionary, incidently. According to my Oxford English Dictionary, (complete in one volume and requiring a magnifying glass to read and a forklift truck to carry), Thomas Carlyle wrote of Voltaire "... there never was such a persifleur, " which is good enough for me.

Talking recipes with people who like cooking. Jenny, who is staying over Christmas, is an enthusiastic cook, and knows how to feret out the best things from parisien markets. Her French mother-in-law, to whom she refers often, is a most accomplished cook, and you can pick up intriguing kitchen smells from this conversation. "She always stirs an egg yolk into her polenta before serving," she says. Technical stuff.

Shakespeare, water-seller, truffle

A column in today's paper by the novelist, Howard Jacobson, approves recent scientific research, which demonstrates that reading Shakespeare is beneficial to the brain. ..."His syntactical surprisingness. .. creates something like a neural flash of lightening, a positive wave or surge in the brain's activity, triggering a re-evaluation process likely to raise attention" at the time and stimulate new pathways for the brain thereafter". In other words as the American poet Emily Dickinson said of poetry: "it makes the back of your neck tingle."

At the Velesquez exhbition at the National Gallery I see that, in the glass held out for water seller in the Water Seller of Seville, there sits a fresh fig to sweeten the water. Does one ever learn to look at a picture properly? I've know that one for years, with the huge earthernware jug in the foreground and the lined, dignified face of the water seller central to the composition, but never before have I noticed the fig.

A black Perigord truffle arrives for Christmas; what a present! How to use it? after some discussion, we take Elizabeth David's advice and make omelates from the finely sliced tuber, which is allowed to impregnate the eggs for a time before beating them and cooking the omelates. We eventually cover the bowl in which the eggs and the truffle wait, but in the interval, the mysterious fungus smell takes over the kitchen.

fruit, manequin,waving

A section in Sainsbury supermarket is devoted to "snacking fruit".

In the window of a men's clothing shop, there is a manequin with a shiny, opaque, completely featureless face. It is wearing a dinner jacket. Its black tie dangles over its open shirt front. Blotto, I think.

A car emerges from a side road, the sun behind it. The driver waves. Is he waving to me? The other day in a queue at the WI market, a small boy greeted me and I responded to find that he was talking to his grandmother, behind me in the queue. I wave back ambiguously in case there is someone else in sight and, as he turns, just recognise the driver in time to realize that this time I have not made a fool of myself.

hot stuff, space, tidings

A book arrives, which is to be a Christmas present for an expected visitor. It is Fuschia Dunlop's Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. I like everything about this book including the author's name. The introduction begins promisingly by quoting Chairman Mao, who said that you can't be a revolutionary if you don't eat chillies.

In Sainsbury's busy car park this morning a young employee is carrying a circular board on the head of a pole. As soon as he detects that someone is leaving, he stands beside the car which is about to emerge and hoists the board vertically. It bears the solitary word "Space". He then uses the board to usher in the next car, rather like airport workers do when guiding airlines to a parking position.

There have been lots of magpies around this year. The other day I counted six on a rooftop. What I didn't know, at the time, was that there is a collective noun for magpies. It is "tiding", a seasonal word too.

rime, squirrels, new book

Hoar frost on the branches of the lime. It begins to melt and, in the early sunlight, you can see drops of water collecting in transparent beads on the end of twigs.

The Grove is full of squirrels. They stand upright, holding a nut between their forepaws which they turn round rapidly as they gnaw it. All the time their jaws are moving, as they earnestly chew. Seen from a distance, with their forepaws together, they could be praying.

It's hard to finish a novel which has entranced you for some time. Nana by Emile Zola was always hard to put down. Starting a new one is hard until you have reached the point when it begins to intrigue you. The new one is Le Soleil des Scorta by Laurent Gaudé, I'm just beginning to miss the parched, barren hills of southern Italy where it is set, and the sullen peasants, who live there at the end of the 19th century. But what will happen to the bandit, who returns to a village after 14 years in prison, to sleep with the woman who has been on his mind since his arrest, knowing that the villagers will almost certainly kill him for his trouble?

mist and fog, visitors, shadows

A misty morning makes me think of the difference between mist and fog. The weather forecast on Radio 4 this morning speaks of "mist and fog". Mist is beautiful. It reduces definitions but does not obscure them. It suggests mystery and contains a light of its own. Fog, as in the second paragraph of Dickens' Bleak House, is disgusting, opaque and penetrating. "The yellow fog that rubs it back upon the window panes... licked its tongue into the corners of the evening," wrote T S Eliot, describing the same thing. With our Clean Air Act, that sort of fog seems to be a thing of the past. And you have to exclude the "fog", as Californians call it, which comes in from the sea in San Francisco, and which is white and reaches out in long, thin clouds, and is nothing like the old fogs of industrial cities like London; more like mist.

It's pleasing to think of the groups of people from different continents which write and visit blogs and comment on them, part of a global village.

As I pass the empty basement of a house into which the sun is shining, shadows of passers-by, myself included, move along the white wall above the empty floorboards.

mouse, punch bag,father Christmas

A mouse scurries out of the alley beside the Grove Tavern and crosses the road in front of me. It's a long time since I've seen a mouse on the loose. How small it is and how fast it runs!

There is a house looking over the Grove where an enormous teddy bear, the size of a large man, looks down from one of the first floor windows. In the afternoon the sun shines into the windows revealing the interior of the rooms. In the room next to the bear's window I can see a full sized punch bag.

Just under the window of a house, which I pass every day, I spot a stuffed Father Christmas hanging on to a rope like a cat burglar.

Seed head 2

 

Dove. surprise drinks, robin

In the High Street a white dove alights in a patch of sunshine.

As we pass a friends house, we are invited to join them for a glass of bubbly.

On a doorstep sits a robin coy as a Christmas card.

blue and red, surprise, poetry

Pomagranite seeds mixed with blue berries taste as good as they look.

The opposite of a bill is a refund. It comes from Southern Water, which usually sends a bill at this time of year. It's the result of having a water meter fitted in May.

I am approached by a teenage girl at Book Fair in the Pantiles:
T G You must like poetry.
Me Why is that so?
T G Because you're wearing a beret.
Me I don't see the connection.
T G Leonard Cohen wears a beret.

windy days, meerkats, telephone tangle

Windy days, when leaves fly, branches swing, people put their heads down.

I like meerkats because of the way they stand up to see what's going on. They gather intelligence like you and me.

A telephone engineer kneels beside one of those pavement-side boxes packed with skeins and skeins of wires, each representing somebody's landline - the tangles of people's lives. He talks earnestly to one line, to which his handset is attached.

seed head 1

Clematis seed, ghost story, unexpected cards

A single seed-head of clematis makes a startling photograph with the help of some fine tuning; the white fronds, tinged with yellow, which are attached to the cluster of seeds in the centre, look like a wild head of hair.

A friend who moved to Bury St Edmunds includes a ghost story in her letter. "Recently, a local dress shop was exorcised because the proprietor heard strange things in her basement, and the dog refused to go down there, his fur all standing en brosse. I'm told I have a secret passage, and I have heard conversations in the night - maybe a frustrated monk seeking a glass of mead, is buried in the foundations". The story is sharpened by an invation to stay.

Every year there is a surprise among the Christmas cards; somebody you didn't expect to hear from reminds you of old times. Usually the surprise is a pleasant one.

leaf scoops, dancing washing, lamp and leaves

In the Grove, the gardeners, have blown the dead leaves into heaps with their mechanical blowers. Now, helped by plastic scoops, which they grasp one in each hand so that they behave like pairs of giant forceps, they load them into the back of a truck.

Washing dances on a line in the wind - a pair of frolicking trousers and shirts waving their arms.

The only leaves left on a plain tree are those surrounding a street lamp which its branches have grown around. They hang round the orange lamp like a green halo. Is it the light from the lamp or its heat, or both, which as kept the leaves in place?

Looking again, passion fruit, micro-kite

Heidi and I look more closely at the bicycle rack, in the form of two minimalist bicycle sculptures, outside Tunbridge Wells town hall, which I spotted a few weeks ago. How did it get there and why is it there? An inscription on the saddle of one of the bikes gives the answer. It reads: "A gift from our twin town Wiesbaden to mark the 400th anniversary of Royal Tunbridge Wells in 2006." Heidi says that she remembers, as a child, visiting Wiesbaden to see her grandmother who lived there.

Passion fruit is much better than it looks and quite as good as it sounds. If the brown skin is smooth it is not ripe; it's best to wait until it becomes wrinkled and even less appetising in appearance. I have been scooping out the edible seeds in their yellowy-green jelly-like coating and using their sweet-and-sour aromatic flavour, to add zest to the rest of our breakfast fruit.

In Calverley Place a young man is flying a two-tailed kite the size of a christmas card. He is sellign them at £3 a piece, and manages to take the money and dispense the packed kites while keeping his sample aloft.

tangerine sky, stamps, Christmas star

The phrase "tangerine sky" - it sounds as though it might be a Beatles song - comes to me as I try to find words to describe the sky behind the tulip tree where the sun is rising. It's not quite right, "but tangerine" is a lovely word, and the smell of the fruit is magic. Just now, the supermarkets are selling tangerines (or clementines, satsumas, or mandarines - I like to think of them all as tangerines), with their leaves attached. The dark green leaves beside the bright fruit is worth the extra cost. ".Andrew Marvell's "..He hangs the orange in the trees like golden lamps in a green night..." comes to mind.

I find a stamp collectors' shop which sells stamps for current use through the royal mail. It feels strange going into this little shop full of penny blacks, penny reds, one-cent-black-on-magentas and the like, and being at a loss to say that what I want, what I really, really want is stamps for my Christmas cards.

Over the Common I spot a bright star in the twilight. It seems to be stationary and then moves slowly in an eastery direction. Not a wise man in sight though.

last pages, sinister cereals, delay

I reach the last pages of my note book. In one, raindrops have created a mirror image of an already illegible entry. It appears suitably worn and worked over. Looking back, I see that early pages cover last April's Munich trip and include a drawing of an old man in a heavy overcoat and black, broad-brimmed hat sitting in a patch of sunlight outside a cafe in Münchener Freiheit. There are drawings of various dogs, including a labrador called Carlos, and a rabbit, a lion and a dragonfly. I shall be sorry to set it aside.

In the "well being aisle" of Sainsbury supermarket, is a section entitled "free from foods". Further on is section displaying "adult cereals".

The other day I finished printing and folding this year's Christmas cards, thirty-two in all, with a smug smile ( a complex piece of work requiring some dodgey positioning of areas of type in relation to the picture) when, I spotted that I had mis-spelled "Christmas". Today I redo the card with improvements, and can't help feeling that it is a beautiful thing to be back where I started.

Changing platforms, balloon, whale cloud

At Tunbridge Wells railway station, the London train is due on platform 1 at almost the same time as the Hastings train going in the opposite direction is due on platform 2. A loudspeaker annoucement tells us that the London train will now be on platform 2 and the Hastings train on platform 1. There is a rush for the bridge, and a breathless realignement of passengers. Heidi remarks that it could part of a new government policy to get an obese public to take some exercise. A man eating a sandwich says: "I like that one. That's a good idea!"

In Covent Garden this saturday afternoon, people wander in and out of the shops, stroll to and fro, watch each other; a group of buskers perform "it's a wonderful life". A lone balloon flies high overhead, powered by the wind, in an easterly direction.

A tall, purple cloud in the western sky looks like a diving whale, the end of its broad tail upwards, its body diving into the urban skyline, where the sun is setting.

wine, efficiency, abacus

"...And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine
'I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine...'"
That's G. K Chesterton. The recent wet weather must have put in to my head.

This morning, in my favourite cafe, a little pot of tea, (tea-bag plus boiling water from water boiler), mug and milk jug appear on a tray on the counter within 30 seconds of my request. My cheese and pickle sandwich appears within another 30 seconds (it is home-made with fresh bread, but pre-wrapped for convenience). It is always like that - a carefully thought out system, which works. That is one reason why it is my favourite cafe.

On the bars of the black wrought-iron gate into the Grove, raindrops hang like the counting beads on an abacus

tertulia, flickering, energy

Tertulia is a particulalry Spanish word for a particularly Spanish concept. It describes an informal group or gathering which gets together regularly- usually in cafes - to talk about matters of common interest. I don't know how much the tertulia is still a feature of Spanish life. It certainly was in the mid-Nineteenth Century, when the novel Fortunata and Jacinta by Perez Galdos, which I am reading at the moment, is set. It is a civilized institution, and I love the thought of it, but reticence and a degree of self-consciousness, make it hard for us to fit something like it into our English culture. On the other hand, what else is a blogging cummunity than a tertulia? So perhaps there's hope.

The sun, low in the sky, feeds its light through the leaves of the bay tree, which dance in the blustery wind, outside my window. The light flickers on the books, opposite the window, so that it looks like candlelight.

I love the mad energy of the wind as it whips the bare branches of the lime tree to and fro.

Blackbirds and berries, silly, beret

As I pass a rowan tree, two blackbirds (a male and a female) are feasting on the berries. Profiled against the bright sky, they peck and swallow the orange berries, their greedy beaks working all the time.

In the Grove an elderly woman ticks off her over-active black and white mongrel. It has picked up an unsavoury piece of paper, which it won't let go of. "You are a silly", she says.

A man, who I have never seen before, greets me in the street."Bonjour," he says." That's a good idea! I've got a large collection of hats but not one of those". I don't know what he is talking about, until I realize that I am wearing a beret basque. I hurry on so as not to miss my place in the queue in the post office, but I do have time to note that the man with many hats is, on this occasion, hatless.

ghost lake, distant view, granite in kitchen

The park in Tunbridge Wells called Calverley Grounds consists of a u-shaped dip or small valley with steepish slopes, where paths, flowerbeds and shrubberies following the rising contours. It is not surprising to learn that the park used, in former times, to contain an ornamental lake. After the heavy rain, a large spreading puddle in the grass, recalls how the park must once have been; on this rather murky day the lake and the past seem to be reasserting themselves.

From a high point in Tunbridge Wells, I watch a wild, soapy sky that would have appealed to Turner. Grey, silver-edged clouds ride against a lemony sky, while sunbeams descend on the distant heathland of Ashdown Forest; in the folds of the heath hangs a misty glow.

A square of black polished granite today takes its place set into the white work-surface of the kitchen. There, in an absent minded a moment, a few months ago, I burnt a hole with a too hot saucepan. Function and appearance have met in the replacement. Something better and more functional has come from a mistake.

Sleep, Christmas tree, change

Sometimes when I can't get to sleep I imagine what it would be like to be a stand-up comedian having to appear before an indifferent audience without any preparation. Strange to report, trying to think up what to say and how to say it, sends me quickly off to sleep.

In Trafalgar Square they are putting up the traditional Christmas tree, which is a present to the people of London from the people of Norway. Later it stands alone as yet without lights looking rather noble in the dark.

Going back to a restaurant which I haven't visited for some time, and noting that nothing has changed- not the menu, not the cooking, not the service. The only thing that is different is the clientel. They are the same sort of people, but myself included, are older. They are no longer there to see who is there; and for the most don't care, as long as they are.

halo, wellbeing, I didn't get you

I wake to a dark, wet and windy morning. I sit up in bed with my cup of tea, and look out through the raindrops, which have been clattering against the window pane, and now cling there. Not all the drops are visible; only those lit by the street lamp which, at 7.30pm, is still on. The illuminated drops form a halo round the lamp, the others fade.

In the supermarket, among aisles labeled fresh meat, canned vegetables, cheese, biscuits, and the like, is one called wellbeing.

Outside a pub a woman shouts into a mobile phone: "I did ring you, but I didn't get you". Will someone set that to music.

To market, to market, sirens, flash mob

The Pantiles, where the Spa of Tunbridge Wells started, has never looked better. It now has its own Farmers Market, and new stalls with striped canvas awnings have been provided. The two walk-ways of which it consists usually suffer from being a "tourist attraction". Now it has a real function, and the people who go there have something purposeful to do, and look all the more interesting for it.

The sound of police car and fire engine sirens still have a special thrill for me, especially when, this afternoon, I watch them, one after the other, negotiate the busy Saturday traffic, ignore the lights and pass on the wrong side of traffic islands. The freedom to break rules is always exciting even if you are not breaking them yourself.

I read about a flash mob party in Paddington station London, where at 7.18pm precisely, 3, 500 people, forewarned by email, start dancing simultaneously to the sound of their MP 3 players.

Puddle

Russian greeting, puddle mirrors, cd storage

As I enter Waterestones bookshop in Charing Cross, I am addressed by someone in Russian. I don't know the person any more than I know Russian (it sounds like Russian). I look elsewhere and wander away from him. He goes off in the opposite direction, still talking. There is no mobile phone in evidence. Perhaps he is talking to himself.

I have always liked puddles. When I was three years old, I used to like splashing through them. Now I like to see the sky and neigbouring structures reflected in them.

A big album arrives with loose leaves each of which can store four cds. You slip the cds into transparent envelopes and the sleeves into similar envelopes, and throw away the plastic cases. The space saving is gratifying.

Nelson, pomegranate explodes, nicked tea

It is some time since I last walked across Trafalgar Square. Last time, I remember, Nelson's column was enclosed by scaffolding and boarded up with a huge mural suggesting that it was under the sea. Today (or rather yesterday), I look up to see that the admiral has been scrubbed clean. Instead of the black statue that used to stare down Whitehall, there is one of pristine white as it must have been when new.

On my way into Tate Britain to see the Holbein exhibition, I notice what looks like a still life on a wall by itself. It resembles a picture by the Spanish painter, Sanchez Cotàn, who lived from 1560 - 1627. Cotàn was famous for small very simple still lifes where vegetables and sometime fruit are arranged in an inset in a wall, with some items suspended by pieces of string. In this instance the picture could, for a moment, have been mistaken for Cotàn's Still Life with Cabbage, Quince, Melon and Cucumber. Only there is a vegetable marrow instead of the cucumber and, instead of the quince, a pomegranate. The big surprise comes when, after you have been looking at the picture for a minute, the pomegranate, which has been hanging from a piece of string, explodes scattering its seeds, while the broken husk swings slowly to and fro. It is not a picture at all but a video, a contemporary work by Ori Gersht. It's worth a visit to Tate Britain just to see this surprising artifact.

I buy a cup of tea at the cafe in the corner of Charing Cross station and find myself a chair at a round table where two other people are sitting. I look down to sort out something in my case, and then look up to see that the tea, as yet un-sipped, has vanished. I return to the counter to find that the assistant, a girl with a high pitched voice like a bird, has cleared it away. "You've taken my tea," I said. "Why didn't you stop me?" she said. Not a beautiful thing, but a decidedly curious one,

red chrysanthemums,blogger in person, golden fruit

A vase of deep red chrysanthemums is in the living room. The tall stems have dark green leaves and almost spherical flowers of the deepest, carmine. The darkness of the red is relieved towards the middle of each flower by a few petals tipped with yellow and a few streaks of orange below each tip. Looked at closely, they resemble slow and gentle flames.

A blogger, who takes wonderful and amusing photographs and is a visitor to this blog from time to time, comes to see us in person today. As a fan of the emotional blackmailers handbook myself, I note that two dimensions suddenly become three, and hints of a personality displayed in scraps, suddenly fill out and become real. And yet there are few surprises; you know so much about the person, you are meeting already. Very rewarding.

The golden fruit of japonica in a front garden. They resemble quinces but are more evenly shaped. You can make jelly with them, as with quinces.

new oaks, dappled things, layers of cloud

The little park near our house, was granted to the people who live in the streets surrounding it, by the Duke of Buckingham 1n 1703. It is called the Grove and the deed, of which he was the chief signatory, makes special mention of "the trees there growing preserved for shade and not any of them to be cutt downe nor any building to be there erected." Three hundred years later, despite the storm of 1978, which felled many trees, and the introduction of a children's playground, it is still a place where trees rule. There is a continuing policy of replanting and the appearance, in the last few days, of a little cluster of three, new oak saplings is a reassuring sign that the Duke's wishes are being heeded three hundred years after his gift.

I wake this morning with Gerard Manley Hopkins' Pied Beauty on my mind:
"... for skies of couple colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh fire-coal chestnut falls; finches wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow and plough;
And all trades, their gear, tackle and trim."

The other morning there were two layers of cloud. Low down and fast moving, a billow of dark grey smokey stuff; behind it and much higher, a bright stack of silvery, gold-lined cumulous standing out from patch of blue.

thinking, clematis, kernals

Waking thought: If you think big, the universe will become bigger. If you think small, there will be more room for it to become even smaller. If you go on thinking one way or the other, you will eventually bump into yourself coming the other way.

Clematis seeds can be as spectacular as the flowers. Wild clematis, spreading like a blanket over headgerows and thickets, is also known as Old Man's Beard. Some cultivated varieties are similarly extravagant when they go to seed. Their drooping, hairy seeds make me think of the shaggy coat of old English sheepdogs, when it falls over their eyes.

Toasted pine kernals, slightly sweet and nutty, are good mixed with rice, or in a salad dressing. I always add some to the dough when I am baking bread, together with sunflower or pumpkin seeds.

Dancing trees

 

golden wing, rustle of leaves, Mr Crow

With the sun low in the sky, the underneath of starlings wings become golden as they wheel into sun beams.

There is an oak in the Grove which still retains a lot of its leaves despite last night's wind. When you stand beneath it, you hear a continuous "hush... hush...hush" as though it is soothing a child to sleep.

Mr Crow sits on his favourite tree, his black feathers glinting in the sun. Some starlings, who also like this tree, seem embarrased by his presence, and move off in batches.

best time, voices, big bottles

My best time of day is first thing in the morning when I take a cup of tea back to bed and read my book, looking up every now and then to watch the sun come up behind the tulip tree.

In the post office there are a number of recorded voices. Behind me, I hear a talking photographic booth: "If you are happy with the photo," it says, in a perky woman's voice, "press the green button...Here we go. We are now printing your order. Please wait". Ahead of me, two voices announce the number of the cashiers as they become free. The voices are recorded by a man and woman. The male cashiers operate the recording of the male voice, and the women, the female voice.

There come into my head the names of giant bottles of Champagne; just in case I should ever want one. A nebuchdnezzar contains the equivalent of 20 bottles; a melchior, 24.
Nebuchdezzar ll was a Babylonian king, who built the hanging gardens of Babylon. It was he who went mad and ate grass. Melchior - there had to be a seasonal connectiion somewhere - was one of the Three Wise Men. He brought the infant Jesus a gift of frankinsence.

how long to burn up? cheese omelate, aspen

According to a big poster which arrived with the newspaper this morning, the sun will enter a "giant red phase"in around 4 billion years. This means that its outer layers will expand and boil away most of the earth's atmosphere.

A cheese omelate made with grated cheddar cheese and two eggs. Grate about 2oz of cheese with a fine grater. Beat the eggs and beat in half the cheese. Heat a little butter in a frying pan until it is just on the point of smoking but not burning. Add the egg and cheese mixture and shake, until it covers the base of the pan. Shake the pan. Then tip the pan to one side so that the uncooked egg meets the surface of the pan. Then tip it to the other side, so that another layer of egg cooks. All the time keep the pan just off, or on and off, the heat so that the base of the omelate does not become leathery. Add the remainder of the cheese to the centre of the omelate , which should still be slightly liquid. Shake, and as the cheese melts, flip one side of the omelate over and let it rest, folded over in the pan, for a few seconds. Then serve on to a hot plate.The whole operation should last a little over a minute. The omelate should be light and soft and the outside should be barely coloured.

Today, I came across the French word for Aspen, the variety of poplar, which has those wonderful trembling leaves. It is, evocatively, tremble.

time to get up, clip-on bird, crayon box

At this time of year, I watch the light enter the bedroom from the side of the blinds and the furniture gradually take on familiar shapes. When you can see the time on the alarm clock, you know that it is time to get up.

A clip-on plastic bird arrives in a parcel of marzipan chocolates from Germany. I clip it on to the handle of the carriage clock in the hall, where it sits looking pleased with itself. No twitchers please.

I am addicted to crayons, particularly the aquarelle variety, which act like water-colours when wetted. Mine are in a wooden box, which bear the inscription Fundacio Antoni Tapies - the art gallery in Barcelona dedicated to the Catalan artist of that name; and that is where I bought them, several years ago. Today I use them to doodle Christmas card designs.

That time of year, Satie, cold room

It is not only the season that reminds me this morning of Shakepeare's sonnet No 73. Someone is to perform it and other sonnets to music. This one begins with the familar words of which one doesn't tire:
"That time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Against those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined chapels, where late the sweet birds sang.

Eric Satie's piano music has been a favourite for a long time. It's the sort of idle, melancholy
sound with a fleeting addictive tune, that you can keep going while doing something else. I read to day that Satie himself described some of his pieces as "furniture music", which you don't have to listen intently to. He was an eccentric man with an engaging sense of humour. Apart from the strange titles - Gymnopédies, Gnossiennes, Trois Morceaux enForme de Poire - which he gave to his pieces, Satie provided instructions on how certain passages should be played. These include:
"In the morning on an empty stomach"
"Hypocritically"
"With a lot of difficulty".

One of the houses overlooking the Grove nearly always has the curtains behind its numerous windows closed. Today, two are open. The sun beams in. In one of the rooms, sits an elderly man. He is wearing an overcoat and a tweed hat.

where? bicycle rack, foregiveness

A young woman shouts into her mobile: "I'm in Liverpool train station". She is on the concourse of Charing Cross in London.

For the first time I notice a bicycle rack outside the town hall. It consists of two minimalist bicycle shapes constructed out of aluminium tube. Each has two spokeless wheels, a saddle, a crossbar and a steering column. . You leave your bicycle between them.

Under "foregiveness" in his commonplace book, An Uncertain World, W. H Auden includes the following:
Priest: Do you forgive your enemies?
Spaniard: I have no enemies. I have shot them all.

500th entry, moving photo, separate leaves

This is the 500th Best of Now entry. The idea, which I took in June 2004 from Clare Grant's Three Beautiful Things (still going strong and in its third year), I interpret in this way. It is to take note of what is going on around you, and to bear in mind that you want to record only what gives pleasure - what, in one sense or another - is beautiful. There should be as little interference as possible from received ideas, aesthetic clap trap and political drivel. Above all because you are looking for things, which amuse and delight, you can afford to be positive without being sentimental or stupidly optimistic about the world. Having three things to note means that you can contrast and balance your choice, and so reflect the richness of daily life. It is not hard to note three beautiful things, but knowing that you have to look out for them brings each day into a sharp focus. It becomes a habit, which is a beautiful thing in itself.

A photograph, which I have taken of a pomegranite, when I upload it onto the computer screen, swims around like a fish before settling into a permanent place. I wonder if I am suffering a dizzy spell, until I realize that I have used the video facility on my camera without meaning to ( I have not used it before) and the swimming fruit was the result of my moving the camera to find the most suitable angle.

The separate leaves, which still cling to branches, shiver and shake and jerk about in the breeze, as though they are in a hurry to be free.

people-watching, 3-d image, old gloves

Sitting in the sun in the Pantiles, drinking coffee in the midst of the farmers' market, and people-watching.

I read in a newspaper supplement about a gadget, which projects a 3-d image in the air like a ghost. It throws the image, from a DVD or computer, onto a microscopically thin screen of "modified air" - made from a mist of minute droplets of water. Its called Heliodisplay and is said to cost in excess of £12,000. Blow on the image and it will disperse and re-form.

The dead leaves of a horse-chestnut hang from the branches of a tree like old gloves.

colours of fruit, nests, wind sounds

The colours of exotic fruit are as good if not better than the taste. With the garnet of pomegranate seeds, contrast the bright green flesh of kiwi fruit; and with the kiwi's fine dark brown (almost black) seeds, match the prussian blue, almost black of blueberries. A finely sliced, ripe mango has an orange glow.

Nests which have been hidden through the summer are now revealed among the branches of trees.

I stand still and listen to the sounds of the wind. It rustles dry leaves; it strums the telephone wires; it drums on wheelie bins; it rattles loose windows and doors; it whistles through apertures; it hums in the air round my head; it vibrates to the distant tune of aeroplanes; it murmurs as I move on; in houses, even, it whispers. It is alive.

butterfly-leaves, porridge, neanderthal

What a strange, prolonged autumn! There are fewer leaves on the lime tree, and they are now more thinly distributed. But this morning, the remainder are still clinging to the branches, bright yellow in the morning light, and, as these sparse remnants flutter in the breeze, remind me of butterflies.

In recent years I have grown fond of porridge. I enjoy stirring the rolled oat flakes into water as it comes to the boil, and watching the gruel bubble and quiver as it thickens.

There are few beautiful things in the papers, but I liked today's story about neanderthal man, homo neanderthalenis.It seems that these cousins of ours were still around 38,000 years ago. The question is: did they interbreed with homo sapiens during the millenia, when they shared the same habitatat? And has modern man inherited any neanderthal DNA? It reminded me of the book by William Golding called The Inheritors, which pictures the two cultures side by side, and leaves no doubt that the peaceful, vegetarian creatures, which Golding contrasted with the nasty, beligerent homo sapiens, were a great deal nicer.

Trains, flying leaves, favourite lines

I recently finished reading Emil Zola's La Bête Humaine. It is a dark book about betrayal and murder. But there are marvellous descriptions of steam trains thundering past a level-crossing keeper's cottage where some of the action takes place, and in the cabin of the locomotive where the driver and the mechanic struggle to control the engine for which the are responsible. The book seems to vibrate with the jolting train, the express between Paris and Le Havre, and you are left stunned by its swift passage, as you are by the remorseless progress of the story, from murder to murder.

Leaves fly horizontally past our bedroom window this morning like birds.

I wake with my favourite lines in English poetry in the forefront of my mind:
"At last he rose and twitched his mantle blue:
Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new."
But I am not going anywhere.

Wallnuts, wrong husband, schoolboy joke

They are selling wet wallnuts at a nearby greengrocer, ie wallnuts which haven't been artificially dried. They crack open easily.The wrinkled nut comes whole out of the shell, and, with its two halves loosely linked, looks rather like a brain. The nut has a thin brown skin under which the colour is a milky white. The taste is a mixture of creams and tannins; a faint, fading bitterness.

I am leaning over a box of books in the Oxfam bookshop, when a stange woman taps me on the shoulder: "Are you ready, Darling?" she asks. I look up. "I'm sorry," she says, "I thought you were my husband".

This one was new to me. "A French cat and an English cat set out to swim the Channel. The French cat was called Un Deux Trois, the English cat, One Two Three.
Which cat made it? The English cat because the Un Deux Trois quat' cinque".

green town, moving animals, abutilon

Tunbridge Wells, where I live, is rated, I see, as one of the UK's greenest towns. It comes third after Norwich and Peterborough.

Transhumance means the seasonal movement of livestock. I like the word because it evokes the way civilisations create regular patterns of life, which affect, and become part of, geography and history. I came accross the word in today's paper, where there was an account of farmers driving a flock of sheep through the centre of Madrid to protest against the erosion of ancient routes and grazing rights, some of which go back 800 years.

The white abutilon in the garden has been in flower since July and its white cup-shaped flowers with yellow centres have never looked better than today.

No leaf fall, leap, timber smell

Because the leaves are not falling even in mid-November and the sun is now low in the sky, it is strange and beautiful to catch the light streaming through the yellow leaves from just above the roof tops, when normally at this time of year the branches would be bare.

Proverb for the rash: Leap and then look for somewhere comfortable to land.

Passing a van from which two men are unloading newly sawn timber to refurbish a shop I remember the smell of carpentry and timber yards and think that it is one of the best smells in the world.

Pearl gray, flapper, Mr Crow

This morning the sky is pearl gray, shining like pearls do, where the sun begins to pierce the cloud layer.

A man walks out of the sun; he flaps his coat outwards like wings. Is he saying to himself: "Look, I'm flying"?

Mr Crow sits on the top most branch of a tree, now bare of leaves. He owns the park. He is black, with shiny feathers; he is slow and purposeful in flight. Down he comes, lands heavily, bounces; with a clumsy waddle he proceeds to peck at the leaf strewn grass for lunch.

Starlings, historic facts, charity bound

Small swarms of starlings are beginning to take over the Grove. They did last winter and their numbers grew. Now they appear again on the trees like animated fruit. They sit on the branches and flute and twitter as the leaves fall, before taking off and wheeling over the park in small groups.

Hegel is often quoted, among others by Karl Marx, for this, and its worth repeating: "All great historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

In the High Street, a small procession of people each carrying two bulging plastic sacks; they disappear into the Mind charity shop.

Pink woman, new hillside, two-headed pigeon

As I walk up Grove Hill Road, a woman in an invalid buggy rides past me on the pavement; she is dressed in pink with a white hat, and we exchange smiles. She looks pleasingly cheerful as people in buggies often do.

When I look due south out of the window this morning I spot, beyond the trees, what looks like a massive dark hillside which seems to have grown up overnight. It is a bank of early morning cloud standing out against the brightening sky. A few minutes later it has shrunk to a mere stain.

On a chimney stack I spot a two-headed pigeon. It is two pigeons in profile, beak to tail.

Quinces, pumpkin face, weather

A quince tree laden with fruit, glimpsed from the train outside Tonbridge station makes me want to leap out of the train and raid it.

Entering London I see from the train a large flat roof used as a terrace. Beside a glass door are a table and two chairs. On the table is a scooped out pumpkin with eyes and gaping mouth, left over from Halloween. Nothing else.

Today it rains and doesn't rain. A grayness and damp prevails. It is not cold nor yet warm. The pavement has a sticky sheen.It is the sort of weather, which, if you were stuck in the middle of the Sahara Desert on in a steaming jungle, would make you think nostalgically of England

Squirrels, cappucino, horses

A squirrel sits on a branch and makes a noise a bit like a duck would make if somone were trying to strangle it. I've noticed this before. This is the noise, which squirrels often make, but why? Nothing seems to be challenging it. It justs sits there and squawks. There are lots of squirrels in the Grove, pehaps too many. Maybe they are suffering from over-crowding.


Words come into my head when I wake up for no good reason. This morning it was theFrench word for the hood-shaped, nasturtium, capucine. It is derived, I imagine from the capucin, which refers to the religious order founded by St Francis, or from capuchon, which means cloak with a hood, or from both since the friars wear hooded garments. Cappucino, the italian word for espresso coffee covered with frothy milk, has a similar origin, though in this case the root is supposed to relate to the colour of the coffee when lightened by the milk.

Behind me in the street I hear the following exchange between two men:
"How did you get on with the horses?"
"Useless. Two seconds and two, nowhere."

sunshine and smoke

 

Oak

 

smell of ironing, crunching an apple, seagull

The smell of freshly ironed clothes especially when the clothes have been drying in the sunshine.

Crunching an apple, not any apple, but an apple such as you pick yourself or buy from the farmers market that has been left to ripen on the tree and to develop its full flavour, without being allowed to go soft and sandy. The juice should spurt when you bite it, and it should taste sweet and sour at the same time.

A solitary seagull circles the Grove barely moving its wings.

Wall, smoke, leaves and generations

Patterns left by wear and tear, and weather on walls have always fascinated me. I photograph a wall beside a car park through which I often pass. The peeling layers of render shows the shape, and a hint of the colour of bricks, and different textures according to their condition. In places, the plaster has broken off completely, and leaves a shape like the head and neck of a prehistoric animal, its jaws wide open; or like a map of an island.

Someone has made a bonfire in one of the garden near the Grove. You notice the smell first, acrid but pleasing, and then see , as the smoke disperses, that the afternoon sun, low in the sky, shining through the branches of an oak, has created the sort of beams you might see on a misty morning in the country.

Under the turkey oak in the corner of the Grove, three generations play with the dry, fallen leaves. The children, a boy and girl, shuffle joyfuly through them; their parents and their grand parents (or so one would guess) pick up the leaves and throw them in the air and over each other.

Nasturtiums

 

Frost, butterfly, squirrel

Frost on the lawn, , a silvery carpet through which the grass just shows.

In the vegetable garden, a tortoiseshell butterfly flits in the sun among the nasturtiums which are beginning to sag after last night's chill.

A squirrel scampers across patches of sun and shade in the Grove so that, as it runs, its long silvery grey body, relecting the light, seems to flash on and off like a Christmas decoration

Teddy back, sun behind tree, chill in the air

For several years the huge teddy bear standing by the first floor window of the house called Windy Bottom on the corner of the Grove, has looked down on passers by, as they have looked up to see him. Recently however he had been absent from his watch. Now he's back with a notice which reads: "Thank you for your lovely cards. LoveU."

In the morning the sun rising behind the tulip tree opposite our bedroom window makes the trunk and branches glow as though they are radiating an inner light.

Today, at last, the weather is doing what it ought to do. The chill in the air makes you feel normal again.

CORRECTION

According to most estimates the universe is 13.8 million years old. I left out the 3. Apologies to the universe and to anyone or anything else involved.

how old did you say? soap and cigarettes, spotlight

Sometimes, I like to remind myself that the universe is supposed to be 13.8 billion years old. It puts things in perspective.

An elderly gent in Halls Bookshop is talking about World War 2. "When German soldiers were taken prisoner", he says, "they asked for soap. The English asked for cigarettes."

A group of people in the Grove stand talking in a shaft of sunlight, which picks them out, the sun being low in the sky, like a spotlight on a stage.