Thorn

It is the middle of the hay fever season; at least in terms of grass pollen, or whatever it is I'm allergic to. It always seems to coincide with Wimbledon, raising the possibility that what I'm actually allergic to is televised lawn tennis. As I get older, I wonder whether the ailment will eventually disappear; for example, if my immune system should cotton on to the fact that it sees pretty much the same grassy antigens year after year and, really, they are nothing much to worry about: not a malevolent threat to my general well-being; and certainly less of an encumbrance than the runny nose and itchy eyes. You would have thought that millions of years of evolution would have managed by now to cure me of hay fever; and possibly even made me an inch or two taller; or given me some sort of super power such as X-ray vision, or the ability to reverse into parking spaces. But no. Perhaps I didn't help myself today by taking the bicycle out for a spin in the countryside: you must inhale a vast amount of pollen when cycling; a bit like a blue whale filter-feeding. Though they usually don't manage too well on the bicycle.

There are a couple of roses, a deep crimson in colour, in a vase on my kitchen window sill. (Actually, it's a glass tumbler, as I'm short of vases. But you would never know.) Sadly, not the precious gift of a mysterious stranger, but a few cuttings from a rambling rose in my back garden. It doesn't usually produce many flowers (I have the same problem with my strawberry plants) but this year it seems to have perked up a bit. And I never know whether to leave the blossoms on the plant, to brighten up a dull bit of garden, or to bring them indoors, and brighten up a dull bit of house.

Succulent

– The cat looks a little bedraggled.
– Yes. She insisted on staying out all day. It rained.
– You would have thought she would have taken shelter somewhere. Under a bush. Or a car. A stationary car, I mean.
– Or even in the conservatory, seeing the cat flap was open. But she doesn't seem to like sitting in the conservatory when no-one is around to let her in the house.
– Perhaps it's the rarefied atmosphere of the conservatory: the exotic plants filling the air with their pungent scent.
–  There are only a few cacti. I'm not even sure they are actually alive. Although one has little pink flowers at the moment. Unless someone has just stuck them on. I don't notice much of a pungent scent though.
– That's the thing with cacti. They don't really do much. Not the most lively of plants.
– But that's what endears them to me. I can't be doing with plants that are sprouting all over the place whenever you turn your back. That need watering constantly or else they shrivel up. At least cacti are sturdy, no-nonsense plants: they don't take offence if you ignore them for a few months. They are not, as far as I can tell, prone to greenfly or slug attack. They even have a protective layer of spikes to fend off annoying visitors who want to make off with a furtive cutting. What more could you ask for in a plant?
– They don't work so well in button-holes or bouquets. They don't conjure up much in the way of romance. Think of ladies' names: Violet, Rose, Lily, Iris are all quite charming; Euphorbia or Echinopsis don't have quite the same allure. A little off-putting, if anything.

Fret

One benefit of learning to play an instrument in your youth (and I am sure there are many, only I didn't want to turn this into something of a didactic essay, crammed with facts and statistics and line drawings to illustrate points not readily conveyed by words alone) is that, many years later, you can fondly revisit the pieces you struggled to learn as a child and find that you can actually play them now, and in fact they sound almost tasteful when executed with a reasonable degree of fluency, in contrast to the painfully halting performances of those early lessons. And you wonder why it only took 35 years to get to this level of proficiency.

I dug out the guitar this evening, and one of my earliest books of guitar music, which I must have bought as a young teenager. (Which may come as a surprise to people who know me, who suspect I somehow skipped my teenage years and went straight to middle age. But then when they see that the music consists of nineteenth century classical guitar classics, they may realise that their first impressions of me were probably correct.) And you remember what it was like to learn the pieces the first time, the ones you liked and the ones you hated; the occasional school concert; comments scribbled across the pages.

Midsummer

– Well. So that's that. The longest day, been and gone. The evenings will start to draw in.
– It was quite pleasant, though. Last Friday, wasn't it? Bright and sunny.
– It doesn't make me feel any happier. It is still a watershed.
– Yes. Although I'm never quite sure what a watershed is. I was driving down the motorway all evening.
– Not the most exciting way to spend the summer solstice.
– I don't know. You get to see a lot of sky, driving along. And I'm not really in to wandering around Stonehenge waving a sprig of mistletoe.
– Sorry?
– I'm assuming that's the kind of thing the ancient druids would have done to celebrate the solstice. But I don't know for certain. Maybe they didn't. Maybe they went for a drive down the motorway. I don't know.
– But don't you feel the significance of the day? This pivotal moment in the course of the year – the tipping-point between summer and winter, between light and darkness.
– A watershed.
– Exactly.
– Whatever that is.
– Well, yes. It is simply a watershed. As in – does it really matter?
– I suppose not. But I would recommend driving down the motorway. You see so much. Admittedly mainly other cars. But also some glimpses of countryside over the embankment.
– It sounds thrilling.
– It was. In a low-key sort of way.

Climate

– Not sure how much more I can take of this sweltering heat.
– It's not that hot. A pleasant summer's day. I'm sure it could get hotter if it tried.
– Perhaps I am more of a winter sort of person. Warm coats, hot drinks, log fires, that sort of thing. Rather than sweltering heat and barbecues and crippling hay fever.
– I don't remember you being so keen on winter when it was actually winter. I thought you were bemoaning the lack of sunshine. And anyway, this warm spell is unlikely to last. They say it will get colder by the weekend. And wetter.
– Cold and wet? Good grief. Whatever happened to summer?

Tiny rail tracks, or huge bicycle?

Fudge

June is moving along quite briskly. Too briskly, perhaps. It is nearly the longest day of the year, which is always something of a mixed blessing: it is good to see the arrival of summer, but you tend to feel a twinge of regret that we will soon be hurtling out of control towards winter, and months of perpetual darkness and numbing cold and Christmas shopping. And I haven't even been on my summer holiday yet.

The twinges of regret are particularly acute when the weather is a bit iffy: the long summer evenings are not so much fun when there is torrential rain bucketing down upon you. I managed to mow the lawn this weekend, in between showers. This was the first time for the new lawn. It must have come as something of a shock. It had been lying there quietly for the last few weeks, minding its own business, becoming accustomed to its new home, when suddenly it gets attacked by a strimmer, and is – literally – mown down in its prime. I know I would feel aggrieved by this act of vandalism, rather like when you were dragged screaming to the barbers as a small child. Fortunately, I can now go along to the barbers with barely a whimper.

Talking of acts of vandalism, I made some fudge this weekend, as something to do. It's not bad. Fudge-flavoured. A bit on the squishy side. I suppose one gets better at it the more one practices, although it may take a while for me to consume this first batch. Perhaps I could give it away to friends. Or passing strangers, for that matter.

Surveillance

I was watching this evening a programme about cats. With the aid of GPS tracking systems and tiny cameras fitted in their collars, the ramblings of a community of 50 cats around their home territory were revealed in intimate detail. I was thinking it might be informative to attach something of the sort to my own cat. It may help to make some sense of the mysterious secret life she leads. To be honest, most of her day is not at all mysterious or secret, as I can see her spending hour after hour asleep on the sofa, or on the bed, or on her cat chair (being an elevated fluffy circular platform barely large enough to accommodate her when she is curled up; and yet she never – well, rarely – falls off).

But there are times when she disappears through the cat flap – just this minute, for example – and lopes off to patrol the garden, and presumably the neighbours' gardens. You can see her sometimes sitting on top of the shed; watching. It can be quite unnerving, in a way. You feel under observation. Clearly, you may be disappointed to learn from news reports in recent days that all your emails and tweets and social mediating may be open to scrutiny by national intelligence agencies. But all of this shades into insignificance when you are faced with a cat staring at you all day.

Faery

I stumbled upon a ruined chapel in the woods, the other evening. It was rather like walking into the middle of La Belle Dame sans Merci: as much of an elfin grot as you're likely to come across these days. There was not much of it left: a few carved stones stacked sombrely one upon another, tracing out the shape of the chapel and the beginning of a spiral staircase; a few red tiles carpeting the floor. It must have been impressive when it was built, which it appears was not so very long ago – the late 19th century, rather than the Middle Ages. But you can still use your imagination, and conjure up a few pale warriors wandering among the yew trees, up to no good.

I knew the chapel was somewhere around there, but had not visited it for many years, so was not sure what I would find, or whether I would find it at all before dusk fell and I was compelled to leave hurriedly. It was no worse than I remembered. Presumably  it is to its advantage that it is hidden in a secluded corner of the woods, especially as it stands in the middle of the busy town of Wilmslow, which is not really the sort of place where you expect to find elfin grots. But it shows how even our modern featureless suburbs can still be home to interesting historical relics, which have the ability to transport us to to ages long gone.

And no birds sing.

Meadow

The lawn is still green, you'll be glad to hear. This is the lawn I created by the sweat of my brow and the blisters of my hands a couple of weeks ago, transforming the desolate landscape of my front garden into a lush and verdant meadow. If a cow was to be spotted grazing contentedly, it would not look out of place. It would find it difficult to move around much, to tell the truth: a couple of steps forwards and a couple backwards; maybe actually turn around, if it put its mind to it. And there probably wouldn't be much lawn left, after a few grazes. Probably not the ideal place to rear a cow, to be honest, what with the passing traffic, and the bins being collected on Wednesdays, and the lack of any cattle grids in the immediate vicinity. But it's a charming thought, nevertheless.

The lawn is frankly too small for any practical use. It is barbecue weather at the moment, with sunny skies overhead and burgers and briquettes filling the supermarket shelves. In truth, a barbecue would just about fit on the lawn, particularly one of those disposable ones, the ones the size of a biscuit tin, but filled with inflammable material, not biscuits; but if you wanted a couple of chairs to sit down on, and a few lawn games, even something relatively modest such as quoits, it would get a little cramped. And if you insisted on keeping the cow, it would be chaos.

Blog

– Talking of anniversaries –
– Again? Surely we've had enough –
– But this is a good one. Honestly.
– Well?
– It is a year – mark this carefully – to the day – to the very day – since this blog was first started.
– Is it?
– Yes.
– A year?
– To the day.
– ... Are you sure?
– Positive.
– Well, that's something, isn't it? Who'd have thought it.
– It just goes to show.
– Indeed... What, exactly?
– Well, it shows what can be achieved if one puts ones mind to something.
– Of course.
– In spite of all the odds. And all that.
– Yes. What odds, would you say?
– There are always odds with these things. It would be quite unusual if there weren't any odds.
– Right... But now what?
– How do you mean?
– Well, what happens next? With the blog.
– I guess I hadn't really thought about it. Perhaps it should carry on.
– As before?
– Unless you have any better ideas?
– No. Not really.
– Do you think we should celebrate?
– Celebrate? The anniversary?
– Yes.
– I suppose so. Right now?
– Or whenever convenient.
– Let me check my diary.

Coronation

– Talking of anniversaries –
– Were we? When exactly?
– Well, not today, but recently. I think. Or perhaps I dreamt it. Anyway, talking of anniversaries, it is 60 years today since the coronation of Queen Elizabeth.
– As opposed to the Diamond Jubilee we celebrated last year.
– Indeed. I always found this confusing as a child, wondering why it took so long to organise the coronation.
– And why did it?
– I've no idea. I never found out.
– Presumably there was a lot to arrange.
– You would have thought so. Invitations to send out, cathedrals to be booked, seating plans, carriages, catering...
– Even so...
– And doubtless they wanted to wait till there was a good chance of fine weather. Think of all the street parties.
– I don't think I've ever been to a street party.
– You don't get that many nowadays. But I suppose it's not very often you have the excuse of a coronation or jubilee.
– Perhaps we ought to find something else to celebrate. Any ideas? It ought to be something that comes around fairly often. Maybe not winning the World Cup, for example.