veins, rural, dragon

The veins  in the petal confirm that this camellia is real.

As I walk through a rural part of  Tunbridge Wells I notice that the blackbirds are less nervous than on our hillside where cats abound and children shout merrily. The birds cock their heads at me, but do not fly off uttering their trilling alarm call.

"Looks like a dragon," says the woman at the check out in Sainsbury's holding up my large root of ginger. "You must like ginger." She is wearing a red  plastic nose for Red Nose Day. She has to remove the nose in order to sneeze.

meeting, chorus, news

Meeting of the newly formed Union of Mannequins (UM) in  a department store window.

One of my earliest childhood memories is  waking to the sound of the dawn chorus in the wood outside my bedroom window. We lived in Forest Row, about 20 miles from here as the crow flies. Today there are fewer trees outside my present window and my hearing is not what it was. The birds seem less noisy and are doubtless fewer. Often I am asleep when the birds, sensing the sunrise before anyone else, burst into song. But this morning, blackbirds in particular are in full song. It must be half past five. Or perhaps 1938.

I am half way through Tony Judt's excellent Postwar, a history of Europe from 1945 to the present day. The more history I read the less time  I have to read newspapers. When, I ask myself, does news become history?  This book ends with the present day. More or less. The news comes via the radio, tv, and the internet as well as newspapers, but I can't help feeling that the headlong flow of events improves with time and containment. Or at least you could say it becomes easier to bear.

chance, health, potatoes

Growing out of the crack between wall and lintel is this Wavy Bittercress Cardamina flexuosa. Not a striking plant, but one which clearly knows how to survive in unusual places.

Shop owners, restaurateurs and pub landlords in The Pantiles have clubbed together to bring a falcon and its handler in for the day, to scare off the pigeons. Attracted by crumbs and other detritus,  the birds have become a  nuisance scavenging  on the pavement with beady eyes and nodding heads. It is no coincidence, we suppose, that the number of pigeons looking  for worms at the grass in The Grove has greatly increased in recent days. They now benefit, it occurs to  us, from a diet much healthier than baguette crumbs, pizza crusts and potato over salted potato crisps.

Having left the ordering of seed potatoes rather late, I learn from the seed merchant that my order, if I give it, will take at least two weeks to arrive. I find another much friendlier supplier with the help of the Internet. The girl at the end of the telephone forgets  to ask for my first name when she takes my details. She rings back to explain. "My name's Joe as well," she says. Probably Jo, but all  the same I warm to her for sharing my name and for the prompt dispatch of my King Edwards, Picasos  and Maris Piers.

spring, chillis, chips

 A few days ago they were in bud. Now today's warm sunshine has opened the buds. They are dwarf daffodils. More like wild ones perhaps. They were planted only a couple of years ago.  Never has The Grove looked better in the Spring. (Click to see whole picture).

Some one has dropped a green chili on the pavement and few paces on another one. Some creature has nibbled one of them, leaving only the tattered shred of a pod. But what I wonder eats chili, other  of  course   than homo sapiens?

Outside the Down Town Fish Bar opposite The Compasses, a fire engine comes to a halt and parks by the curb. Two firemen descend and enter the shop. We should have know. There is no one to rescue; no fire to put out. The firemen emerge white packages in their arms. It is time for lunch.

crow, technical, bus stop

Another use for television.

In the train two women natter in the seats opposite me. They speak of their children and other people's children with all the fluency of motherhood. Referring to one child, one  of the women begins "He's ...." and searches for the right word  "...artistic." "Yes, says her companion  "... he's a bit computery." Two terms which do not necessarily go together.

I am not often in London on a Sunday. So I don't notice that there appears to be a shortage of buses in The Strand opposite Charing Cross station. It is beginning to rain. I register the sound of music drifting over from Trafalgar Square. As I wait at the bus stop, an American woman under an umbrella walks past and says to me: "The buses aren't running. They've stopped the buses." And so they have. I thank her. "I just wanted to pass it on to some one." she says. In the taxi, the driver says to me: " It's St Patrick's Day. They've stopped the buses in Trafalgar Square".  In Dublin perhaps. In New York, perhaps? St Patrick may have expelled snakes from Ireland, I think to myself.  But to stop London buses. Is this something new?

feet, chips, lads

Feet outside The Ragged Trousers in The Pantiles.

He holds a bag of chips a little in front of him as though it is an offering, something sacred. But its contents are for him rather than for a deity. He wears a mauve anorak . The woman who is with him wears a green one.   She is talking... talking.. The man says "yerghe... yerghe".  In the intervals  he pushes chips into his mouth, one by one.

By my definition lads are in their 20s or early 30s, proud of their cropped hair and beer bellies and are not modest about their opinions. They are football supporters. Two lads are walking in the The Grove. They are talking loudly to one another. One is pushing a pram with a child in it - a distinct anomaly.  They are talking loudly to one another. Each lad, more in character, has an almost full pint tankard in his hand.

viewpoint, trade-in, parrots

 Separate chimney pots for these starlings.

A neighbour sitting on her garden wall to do some weeding complains that if she bends over too much she has to visit the osteopath. So most of the time she pays someone to do it. "It's a sort of trade-in," she says; " At £7.00 an hour it's less expensive  than the osteopath."

Flower sellers tend to shorten parrot tulips to "parrots". We like  the dark red ones with green streaks  on their  petals. Two bunches in a vase by the window make up for another sunless day.

yellow, bumble bee, books

Yellow is the cheerful colour of this time of year. Apart from daffodils, there are in flower just round here in gardens and in the wild, gorse, primrose, lesser celandine, winter jasmine, and this forsythia.

The sun disappears this afternoon and the wind, laden still with icey whispers, blows round my ears. Undeterred a bumble bee, must be a queen in search of somewhere to build a nest, zig zags ahead of me, as I walk up Mount Sion.

Although I buy fewer books nowadays and  have a reading list that stretches to the moon, I still get a thrill on the rare occasions when a book arrives in the post. Today not one but three books are brought to the door by the postmen. One is The German Genius  by Peter Watson  (Barrett Bonden reminded me of its existence and recommended it  in Works Well ), which I can't wait to read. The other two are books of poems by Heather Dohollau. It was she that Lucy Kempton  so successfully introduced to Qarrtsiluni for its translation theme, with translations  into English by the author from the original French. These books are delightful to handle, lovely heavy paper and  light board covers, but it is the content which above all makes my day today. I always have to read poetry slowly and when it's in French even slower, but these poem have already gripped me from the start with their sense of mystery and the mystery of place and a gentle melancholy too of the sort which cheers rather than saddens the spirit.   "... de combien de nuits a besoin le jour pour être jour? "How many nights does the day need in order to be day?"  Elsewhere she refers to walls in the morning laineux de lumière,  literally"woolly with light", an image which strikes me original and startlingly accurate, when you think of the soft light of dawn.

open, stars, knuckle

At last. Open for business.

There is a closely clipped leylandii hedge in Mount Sion, which incorporates some forsythia, normally a shrub which gardeners find untidy after its has flowered and is only tolerated because of its early explosions of yellow in advance of Spring.
 " ... and pinkly bursts the spray
Of prunus and forsythia across the public way."
But set as it is here, its flowers level with  the evergreen fronds, look like stars shining from a green night. Never has leylandii, that most hated of suburban trees, or forsythia, appeared in a better light.the hedge

From the butcher, the most economical and at the same time one of the finest-tasting, cuts of ham - the knuckle. Lots of uses but best of all when the meat has been eaten, is the lentil soup made with the bones.

hands, glow, chocolate

Hands at work and play.

This morning the grass  is silver with frost and over the sloping gardens there is a layer of mist glowing in the sun.

Dave, who has at one time or another painted the walls and ceilings of all the rooms in our house, calls to day to discuss another decorating job. In the cab of his van is his new dog, a six month old Labrador puppy. We are introduced. "Chocolate", I say, because he is precisely the colour of a bar of plain chocolate. "He's a Chocolate Labrador," says Dave, as if confirming my reaction. I have to admit the breed of Labrador is new to me, but there can be no doubt about why it is described as chocolate.

blackbird, catkins, no parking

I am thinking about blackbirds this afternoon. So far this year, though I  have seen many, male and,, like this one in The Grove, female, I haven't heard one singing. Alarm calls there have been in plenty, but that full throated territorial song has yet to announce Spring. I took this photograph a few days ago failing, in the process to catch the male who was hopping around nearby. This afternoon, a male settles on a post just a few feet in front of me. He puts it head on on one side, to say hello, I think. I manage to click my camera at waist height so as not to worry him and hope that he is in focus, but  he proves camera shy when I lift it higher, and flies off.

Masses of catkins have fallen on to the road under what I take to be a hazel tree. They look like giant, furry caterpillars.

A gate beside a house in Christ Church Avenue, a private road near The Grove, bears a plaque with the words:"Prier de ne pas stationner. Sortie de voitures." There is no English translation.

rust, detoxification, discipline

Rust stains spreading in concrete.

A bar of chocolate displayed on a shelf in Sainsbury's  bears the message: " A mind detoxifying  chocolate treat".

The three small children of a neighbour are lined up by the curb in Grosvenor Road. Their father runs after them to make sure they don't attempt a crossing unsupervised. "Wait," he says. They wait. Ever obedient, I wait too. Though I am not sure that I might  not otherwise have done. Another car appears at the bottom of the hill. "Wait," he says. They wait, but, remembering that I am grown up and relatively free of such constraints  I march forward, but not without a tremor of guilt.

discarded, sea, silence

A brush discarded in a skip.

Describing trade and cultural exchanges between countries bordering the Indian Ocean in  A History of the World in 100 Objects, Neil MacGregor concludes that  "seas usually unite rather than separate the people who live on their shores.

 I have thought, though I am as guilty as most other people of neglecting it,  that  the value of silence in conversation is too much ignored.  Today I find that  Jonathan Swift  is of the same mind. "They have a notion," says Gulliver of the Houyhnhnms, the superior race of horses, whom he encounters on the last of his voyages, "that when people are met together, a short silence does much improve conversation: this I found to be true; for during those little intermissions of talk, new ideas would arise in their minds, which very much enlivened discourse."

cover, bonfire, glimpse

 Metal plaque from 20Th- 21st century discovered in Tunbridge Wells. Purpose uncertain. The significance of the  figures, the hieroglyphics and the instructions, "slide out" and the arrows pointing in both directions is the subject of debate among archaeologists.

A man is breaking up and burning fallen branches and brushwood on The Common. I ask him if I can take a photograph of the fire, "Why?" he says.
"Because I like bonfires.
"What do you want a photograph for?"
I take photographs all the time." I avoid the word hobby: "It's a pass time."
"Well, I don't want to be in it"
"That's all right," I say, "I don't want you to be in it".

As I take a quick short of the fire excluding its guardian, I think of the French film I saw years ago, where a visitor stands before a  log fire in a room  in a  medieval castle. We don't know his identity, but when he puts his hands out towards the fire, and the flames lean eagerly towards him, he is immediately identified as The Devil. That's me I think, and steal another shot.

Passing the window of a house this morning, I spy a bookshelf, and that urgent curiosity which besets me so often, makes me want to look into the room and read the titles. I am not proud of it. But it is so deeply rooted that it surprises me sometimes when others do not share similar urges. Perhaps they are better brought up and are bred not to stare and not to look. How much they must miss.

access, buds, ways

 An invocation perhaps. Something to think about at your feet.

 Daffodils in The Grove
Tight green buds stay closed
In the north wind till the sun
Eases them open.

In Lakeland, the kitchen utensil store, well know for its ingenious gadgets, one old lady says to another: "Anything that's unknown to me ... I don't like. I can't be bothered with newfangled things."

warning, seedlings, spam

Notices often strike me as having a general rather than a specific message. This one is hard to identify as one or the other.

In the sash window of a house which I pass  this afternoon, a small plastic bag hangs containing five or six seedlings in a little soil. They like me are waiting for the Spring.

Google's advertisements which pop up in response to words which appear on Google mail never cease to amuse. None more than today's. Google mail's own spam file today, as I dispatch a spam message, into oblivion, triggers a recipe for a "Creamy Spam Casserole. Makes 8 servings".

railings,contemporaries, rarebit

What appeals is the sturdiness of these railings and the gnawing habit of  the rust that seeks to undo them.

I enjoy the company of  people of my own age at a clinic which I attend once a year. Conversation is less inhibited than with younger people.  You can talk freely about the slippery pavements in the snow, the chill wind that still persists, the dire state of the town centre. I listen sympathetically to a man who enjoys  caravan holidays, and help an elder lady up the steps into the van where the clinic operates, which makes me feel quite debonair.

If there is one thing I like it is welsh rarebit. I like toasted cheese, but welsh rarebit has the edge in luxury. My current favourite recipe is to mix grated cheddar cheese, with cream cheese, some mustard and Worcester sauce of course, which is then spread  on the untoasted side of slices of bread, toasted on the other side, before being returned to the grill. Yes, pizza is alright too.

grid 2, camellia, unacademic

The absence of sunshine  in recent days may in some part account for the absence of colour in the illustrations with which my daily posts begin. But there are compensations to be found in looking into what is hidden

A camellia which flowers energetically at this time of year in Grove Avenue usually rates a mention here. Now in particular, because it reminds me that since I first referred to it- it faces north which best suits camellias and other members of the tea family, I have learned that you spell camellia with two "l"s rather than one, as I did the first time round. I am not too old to admit that I am still learning to spell.

A woman enters Hall's bookshop with a stack of books which she wants to sell. " I bought these for my children.  I thought that they were going to be academic but they turned out not to be, " she says and adds, as an afterthought: "And I've got two Oxford Dictionaries, practically new."

grid, pigeon, mothers

Through the grid covering a drain there is a glimpse of  water.

This morning before I make the tea, looking out of the window I see first, the sun giving an extra glow to the withdrawn into its breast. When I return with the tea tray, the pigeon is still there, but it has woken up and it is looking at the azalea, or at least in its direction.

A  young neighbour greets me in The Grove. We exchange "how are yous?". A willing informant, he says as a prelude to moving on: "It's Mothers Day soon. I must go and get some cards". Cards in the plural, I think to myself.Unusual, surely,  for Mothers Day.

neglect, notes, nodding

 Rust and peeling layers of paint add interest to a finial on these neglected railings.

My late brother Michael's occupation required him to make a lot of speeches, many of the after-dinner variety. He was widely read and appreciated the gleanings of others of the same inclination. None more than  those of Geoffrey Madan,  described by a contemporary as " a true scholar without any of the affectations of scholarship". He died in 1947. Madan's notebooks with their many quotations testify to his wit, perspicacity and consummate prose style. I can understand why Michael found them a constant source of inspiration.  So much so that when he was waiting for a replacement prosthetic leg - he had lost a leg to diabetes - he postponed an order for the new leg in order to buy, for a considerable sum, one of the six original typescripts of the notebooks compiled by Madan's wife after his death.  As far as I know, despite a year's prolonged discomfort, he did not for a moment regret his decision. Today I spot in Hall 's bookshop  on the 50p shelf a paperback selection from the notebooks of which I already have a copy.  I greedily fork out for it just in case I can find someone who would like it. The recipient will discover for himself the name of the magistrate who said: "People are entitled to shout when they are drunk. That is not being disorderly.Or the name of the American girl who said of the Ten Commandments: "They don't tell you what you ought to do: and they only put ideas in your head."

In The Grove this afternoon, the heads of  a crowd of pigeons bob up and down on the grass as they peck for food.