Out and about again

Most enjoyable lunch with John, and a great catch up with the next two generations - and their large and boisterous golden retriever, Bowser.  Rotten drive to get there: if I tell you that we were getting over 54 mpg on the way, you’ll get an idea of the speeds we were doing.

After that, the ride down to Southampton was a lot easier - and faster, and we were aboard the Queen Anne and installed in our cabin pretty promptly.  We haven’t taken time to explore yet, but the cabin, though smaller, we think, than in the lesser Queens, is well enough appointed, and the shower, at last, has a proper door.  Our dinner companions are pleasant - though we’d asked for a table for two, we’ve been given an oval six-seater, so we’ll see how it works out.

As I write, we’re in sight of the south coast, and still getting a decent mobile signal, so I’d better get this away before we go incommunicado.

Quiet hereabouts

Not so long ago, we heard the sounds of sirens and the flashing blue lights of a fire engine hurtling past the front of the house, followed closely by an incident commander’s car of similar subtlety.  Today it was the air ambulance (a charity we support in lieu of the taxes we should be paying to support such essential public services).  It landed on a patch of grass just round the corner from us, and stayed there for a good hour, presumably while paramedics worked on someone.  In due course, it took off and headed for the William Harvey in Ashford, so I guess it was some kind of cardiac emergency.

Meanwhile we have pottered in the garden, hauling out lots of weeds, cutting the grass: fun stuff like that.  I’ve been hardening off the first two tomato plants, each of which is sporting two trusses of flowers.  They are also putting up lots of side shoots, which I’m nicking off and sticking in water.  A few are rooting already, so I’ll soon have to decide when to stop propagating.  I suppose I could do more and sell a few.

I hope someone’s running the country: the Rt Hon the First Lord of the Treasury seems to be hopping from gaffe to solecism, bringing the country firmly into position as the laughing stock of Europe.  I think I may stay up on election night, and put a couple of bottles of Prosecco in the fridge.

Busy in the garden

Martyn has planted out strawberries in one of the raised beds, and I’ve potted up the first of the tomatoes.  We got the usual six Sweet Olive seeds in the packet, and all have germinated.  The four I sowed in old compost are barely forming true leaves, but the two I put in new stuff are over two feet tall and forming their first trusses of flowers.  Lesson clear.  Annie, meanwhile, has sent some Sweet Apéritif seeds, and the three that germinated are now growing well and potted up.  From the first two Sweet Olives, I’ve taken out some side shoots and put them in water to root.

Ben has top-dressed most of the new bed at the top of the garden, leaving a second bag of muck with which to complete the job.  I’ve taken a couple of buckets of the same and top dressed most of the roses, which were already doing pretty well.  We’re still waiting for flowers on the three roses we planted last back end in memory of Michael, Rowena and Tim.  Michael’s rose looks like leading the field, which is unsurprising given his tendency to use the accelerator as an on-off switch.  

The hanging baskets at the front of the house are planted up and growing well: some geraniums, trailing fuchsias and lobelias.  I’ll need to remember to feed them, since they are rather too tightly packed in. We bought a bunch of new plants last year, including some oriental poppies.  We already have orange and pale pink varieties, and today have the first flower on a blood red one.

Age

It’s getting to us both a bit of late.  Following a pretty rough few weeks, Martyn is feeling better and the results from various tests etc are encouraging.  I’m not changing much, with some enduring discomfort and indignity.  But we’re the right side of the grass, and doing most things we want to.  We’ve both been gardening, and Ben has done most of the top dressing of the top bed, which looks much the better of it.

A climbing rose we planted a couple of years ago is flowering profusely, and doing its best to cover a bay and a half of the fence.  Another nearby is a little less vigorous, but doing well nonetheless.  Ben’s muck spreading will encourage them both.  We’ve started re-planting the various containers with summer stuff like tagetes, rudbeckias and lobelia, and we’ve got all the geraniums out of the sitooterie and into pots and beds.  

Our sweet olive tomato seedlings are mixed: the two we started in new compost are thriving - and starting to put out side shoots, from which we’ll increase the stock.  The others, which we started in old compost are altogether less enthusiastic, but three of Annie’s Sweet Apéritif seed have germinated, and look vigorous.

To our surprise, our local MP has joined the colony of rats leaving the sinking ship.  Two days after his announcement,  neither his web site nor his constituency party’s has anything to say on the subject, though word is that he cites ‘the political climate’ as his reason.  My guess is that the tories will parachute in one of the big beasts most likely to lose their seats, though Disgustedville is no longer the safe seat it once was.  The recent local elections saw the Lib Dems take overall control, bagging over three times as many seats as the tories.  Our ward is now represented by two Labour councillors and one from the Alliance group.  The chances of Labour taking the parliamentary seat are pretty slight, but if tactical voting is as widespread as predicted, the tories should be very worried, particularly if they don’t field a punter that local voters like - and that will now be difficult.  Interesting times.

Emerging from the cave

We have been out and about a little more of late, taking in a couple of performances at the biennial Mayfield Festival.  Last week we were at an enjoyable Cole Porter evening: two capable singers and a pianist who warmed up as the evening advanced.  Last night was the high spot of the festival - for us anyway - with a superb recital by Imogen Cooper.  Mostly stuff I hadn’t heard before, though the second Schubert impromptu was familiar, and I knew one of the Bach chorale preludes.  She paired a piece based on a highly depressing Dowland composition, written by one Thomas Adès, with a Beethoven sonata which neither of us knew, but which delighted me with a couple of lengthy fugato passages in the final movement.  I likes me counterpoint.  She was never going to get away without an encore, and rounded off the evening with a familiar Chopin piece.

Despite having taken cushions with us, we finished up with gravely numb bums from the church pews.  As I still have a lot of post-operative discomfort in that department, this was a bit of a trial.  But one nice surprise was to have my glass of wine dispensed by our former GP, who is plainly thriving in retirement.  I complimented him on his choice of our current GP to take over his list: ‘not that we don’t miss you, of course!’.

The weather has moved from chilly and very wet to sunny and very warm, so we’ve been out in the garden quite a lot, planting out summer bedding, doing a spot of weeding and just sitting beneath the parasol for meals and a bit of general idleness.  Today it’s off to the stores for supplies of compost to earth up our vigorous spuds.  We’ve sown them in the raised bed by the kitchen door this year instead of using bags, so will see if that makes any difference.  We’re experimenting with a salad potato, Alexandra, which we’ve been getting from Fortnums and enjoying.  I couldn’t find seed potatoes, so just chitted a bag of shop stock, and hope for the best.  The aquilegia seedlings I grew last year seem to be coming true to the plants I harvested the seed from: they in turn were seedlings fro Sutton’s Simply The Best.  Recommended.

 

Busy week

Three lunches with family and friends, a funeral, a wedding, a German conversation group meeting, hours waiting around at the motor trade and a Covid booster jab.  

On Monday I’d to travel to the next county for my Covid booster, which was administered promptly and painlessly.  The following day, as predicted, I’d a sore arm and felt pretty lousy, so it was as well I was kept busy.  Four of us met here to chat in German.  Our practice is for the hosting of the meeting to circulate, and for the host to propose a text to prime the pump.  Coincidentally, my Bern Facebook friend Matthias had posted an article from the Swiss Cystic Fibrosis journal about his participation in a trial of a medication that has transformed his life, so that made for happy reading and a good discussion.  

Straight after that we were off to lunch with Claire and Richard at a nearby hostelry which I won’t be using again in a hurry: we both found the meal a bit testing at the time and more so afterwards.  Great to catch up with old friends, though.  

Lunch out next day at Chris and Jon’s: I took a disused washing up bowl full of plants: Chris is replanning their garden, and I’m rarely short of cuttings and seedlings to exchange with friends.  Super lunch in great company.

On Thursday I spent a couple of hours at the garage, being assailed by Greatest Hits Radio while the grease monkeys tried to find out why the cruise control wasn’t working on the car.  Three test drives later, they found that re-initialising various computers solved the problem.  It also brought into service quite a lot of functions that were not working when we took delivery, eg automatic unlocking as you approach the car, and confirmatory flashes when the car is locked and unlocked.  By the time they’d finished I was starting to get quite stressed and ratty, so I guess my customer card is filed under ‘awkward’.  But the cruise control now works.

Corina’s funeral on Friday was quite sparsely attended, but it has been a few years since her care home closed down - and her customers obviously were no longer in circulation.  We’ve had a few funeral teas lately, and I can say that the Disgustedville Masonic Centre knocks the rest into a cocked hat.

On Saturday we had lunch with Martyn’s sister Sandra on the way to their niece Nina’s wedding.  Churlish to mention it, but as it’s her third, many fingers are crossed.  Her new man Lee seems a happy, sensible sort, so we’re full of optimism.  The reception was generously catered and pleasant - and mercifully free of speechifying - but the room was cramped and noisy, and when the thumping music began, I was very eager to be somewhere - anywhere! - else.  

So today we’ve had a quiet day so far at home.  The jacket I wore to the funeral shed a button on the day, and the one I wore to the wedding was coming close to doing the same, so today I’ve been busy with needle and thread.  The only black thread I could find was in a little étui branded Hotel du Louvre, Paris: my only visit there must have been over thirty years ago.  I could have raided another similar source branded TWA, which was last a brand in 2003, so goodness knows how long I’ve had their needle and thread.  While rummaging I found some Woolworth’s iron-on mending fabric, so have fixed a little tear in one of Margaret’s much-admired quilts.  Good job we don’t throw stuff away, eh?

Photos: our Bramley in blossom, and Annie’s wisteria, and a little azalea, a present from Sandra.

Seemed like a nice idea…

Since the weather is cool but fine today, we thought we’d make a trip to Emmetts, where the primroses and bluebells are beautiful at this time of year.  Had I thought to check the web site, I’d have learned that access from our side of the mountain is blocked by roadworks.  The detour would have taken quite a while, so we opted for a gentle drive home, pausing at Bough Beech to watch a moorhen fishing - and a bunch of old geezers (said he…) sitting on canvas chairs and wielding enormous cameras.  Well, we saw plenty of bluebells by the roadside anyway, plus honesty, lilac, apple and cherry blossom etc, so it wasn’t a wholly wasted journey.  Quite apart from the flowers and blossom, it’s always a joy at this season to see the countless shades of pale green as the trees come out of dormancy.

The little orange car passed the 100 mile mark today, and coped well with the appalling road surfaces that epitomise the legacy of the past fourteen years of - at best - incompetent government.

My new desk arrived on Sunday: fully assembled, thank goodness.  My IKEA skills remain intact, but preferably unused.  Having last used said skills on oak-finish bookshelves, the study thus looks a bit less incoherent than heretofore.  

The packaging was pretty generous, though I feel rather guilty about heaving so much polythene and expanded polystyrene into the bin.  (Given what else has to go in there these days, maybe the plastics are no worse.)  The cardboard, on the other hand has a more honorable future: our new neighbour Lisa is completely restarting the garden across the road with a Japanese theme, so she’s suppressing all the grass, laying cardboard and wood chippings and planting through them.