Georgic

– I was thinking, the Royal Baby must be a week old by now.
– Eight days old, I think you'll find.
– There you are. Over a week old. Already.
– Indeed. Time flies.
– We've not seen all that much of him.
– You were expecting a personal invitation?
– No, not at all. Although it would have been nice. I meant, we've not seen much of him in the media lately.
– He obviously values his privacy.
– I suspect it's more his parents. After all, he probably doesn't yet know what the media is. Are. Whatever.
– Children grow up so quickly nowadays. He's probably already on Twitter.
– Goodness. I wouldn't have thought he'd have that much to communicate. I know he mixes in royal circles, but even so.
– Celebrity is but a passing whim. Although you would hazard a guess that he will remain famous for quite a while yet.
– It makes you think, though: the fact that we know the line of kings for the next hundred years or so. Sort of puts things in perspective.
– Yes. If only we knew the succession of Prime Ministers as far in advance. It would put an end to futile political wrangling.
– There would be a certain inevitability to parliamentary elections.
– It would be for the best. Less disappointment all round.

Grebe

It has been a rainy day. Not one of those with unbroken glowering clouds and constant precipitation from dawn to dusk, but the sort where you have sunny blue skies and fluffy white cumulus to lure you outside, only for a thunderstorm to appear out of nowhere and drench you before you can find the slightest scrap of cover. I had got as far as packing the bicycle in the back of the car, and driving north to what should have been sunnier climes, when the skies started to turn bleak. So I went for a short walk around the ominously named Black Lake, with an umbrella for company, in the hope that things would brighten up.

The lake is not as dismal as it sounds, although, to be fair, it is somewhat downbeat as lakes go. Not much happens there, apart from the odd water bird bobbing placidly about. And a sign about water voles, which I didn't get to see, so I have to take it on trust that there were actually there. But as I strolled, the occasional raindrop turned into a sudden thundery downpour. I took shelter under my umbrella, and, in an effort to avoid any stray drops, under a tree; although admittedly I started to wonder about the advisability of standing under a tree in a thunderstorm. But then, were I to wander around in the open, would the lightning bolts decide that my umbrella was highest point to aim for? Sometimes you just cannot win.

As it was, I survived unscathed. There was something quite moving about standing in the pouring rain, watching the ducks getting wet on the lake. We don't seem to do much standing about in the rain nowadays, waiting for it to stop: either we don't venture out to begin with, or we just continue our journey regardless. We don't have the time to watch and wait. I remember as a child this seemed much more common: you would hang around in shop doorways, or even in the doorway of someone's house, to watch the rain coming down. In those days you didn't have a car parked around the corner to jump into. And bus-stops didn't have shelters. But you had the time to watch the rain coming down.

Marguerite

July is slipping by. The schools are breaking up, holidays are approaching. The garden is looking exhausted after the relentless heat. Royal babies are suddenly popping up all over the place. A typical summer.

The heat has relented recently, to a modest degree, with a few cooler days and a few thunderstorms, helping the lawn to recover some of its greenness. But then it just gets hot again, and humid. Almost tropical. It doesn't seem right, somehow. Not how a summer is meant to be.

I've been trying to keep up with the Proms, but it's proving difficult. There are too many of them, and not enough hours in the day. I am beginning to accumulate recordings that will need to be watched some time soon. But then you don't necessarily want to spend these warm evenings watching television when you could be outside in the garden, admiring the flowers, being bitten by things.

I have started opening the windows in the living-room in the evenings, to encourage the circulation of cooling breezes. Cat, however, sees it as an invitation to sit on the sill with her head poking outside, watching the world, or what she can see of it, go by. It seems to cheer her up no end.

Something still alive in the garden.

Spice

I wasn't feeling so good first thing this morning – a bit of a dodgy stomach, maybe even a touch of gastritis. That sounds quite impressive, exotic in its own way, rather than coming down with a more commonplace bout of run-of-the-mill  indigestion. A better class of ailment. Perhaps it was the result of last night's takeaway. With my son visiting, I thought I would treat him to a curry from a highly reputable Indian restaurant. And it was indeed very appetising. And with no apparent adverse effects on my son. But it may be that, with my advancing years, I have unfortunately become more sensitive to the potent spices of the East. I am all right now, you'll be glad to hear, although I have been feeling listless today and have not had much of an appetite, which is unusual for me. A few morsels of bread and hot tea is basically all I've had to eat, as well as a few other bits and pieces out of the fridge, including the remnants of the curry. I will fade away if I'm not careful.

As part of my convalescence I got round to watching belatedly a recording of this year's First Night of the Proms, which featured a stirring performance of Vaughan Williams's A Sea Symphony. I remember singing it with the choir last year. From the back of the choir it is not always easy to see or hear everything that is going on, especially as the soloists tend to be miles away in front of the orchestra; so it is good to have the opportunity to watch a performance from the right direction. It is such an overwhelming piece: so much of it, and seemingly so wildly unstructured: all over the place, in a nice way. And difficult to sing: a lot of notes, which don't always appear where you expect them; and the tempo changing constantly, so no two bars are taken at the same pace. Some members of the choir on the TV looked quite calm, as if it was effortless; whereas I seem to remember it took considerable mental agility to keep up with the conductor, not to mention physical effort to make oneself heard. And I do like to put some emotion into my performance. Though I'm not sure the audience would agree: they might have preferred less.

Lethargy

– It doesn't seem to be getting any cooler.
– That'll be because of the heat wave.
– I know. But you would have thought it might have waned by now. It's been – who knows, weeks. And fairly relentless. I am beginning to wilt.
– Really?
– I don't mean literally. Not like, say, a tulip. But metaphorically.
– Like a daffodil.
– Yes. Well, actually no. Not like any flower. Metaphorically. My general enthusiasm and energy levels, for example, are wilting.
– Making you feel lethargic and disinclined to bouts of strenuous activity.
– Exactly.
– Not to mention becoming increasingly antisocial, self-absorbed and generally quite ratty to anyone unfortunate enough to cross your path.
– Well, I'm not sure I would go so far...
– You don't?
– But you think –?
– I couldn't possibly say. But if you really want to know –

Apprentice

I seem to have watched more of the current series of The Apprentice than in past years. I was going to say I have watched more of it than is good for me, which is probably also true. I tell myself that it is nothing more than shallow and exploitative reality TV. But then, on the plus side, it has taught me most of what I know about business. Other than what I see on Dragons Den. Perhaps my university career would have been more successful had every academic subject been taught via the effective educational medium of reality TV.

It makes you wonder about apprenticeships in general, and how they don't seem as common as they were in the novels of Dickens, in which expectationless young orphans would be drafted for seven or fourteen or twenty-one years to learn the trade of a blacksmith or quantity surveyor or whatever. In my own profession, if it can be dignified by such a grandiose term, it takes at least a lifetime, if not two, to learn the basics, let alone to approach any serious level of proficiency. Hence we are a disappearing breed. I might actually be the last one.

Tomato

– You sometimes find yourself worrying, don't you, or maybe it's just me, about reaching some kind of a – tipping point.
– How do you mean?
– You know: things are seemingly going along all right, nothing out of the ordinary, but then –
– It tips.
– Exactly.
– Into what?
– Not into anything, in particular. It just tips in a general sense.
– In a good sense?
– Sometimes. Sometimes not.
– I would like to agree, but I'm not a hundred percent sure what we're talking about.
– That instant when –
– Yes. I got that bit. But in reference to what?
– Well, at the moment, there are several things. Life is like that.
– Name one.
– There's salad, for instance.
– Did you say salad?
– Yes.
– I thought this was going to be a serious conversation.
– It is serious. Maybe not the most serious in the overall scheme of things, but in its own way.
– Go on.
– Don't you ever feel that, eating salad day in and and day out, as I've started to do this summer, there will come a time when you can't stomach another leaf?
– Yes. Now let's talk about something else.
– You're not offering much sympathy.
– So this is your tipping point?
– I'm not there yet, but it could be just on the horizon.
– Let me know when it happens. I'd like to be around to see it.

Thermodynamics

It's difficult to know what to do about the heat. I guess I shouldn't complain, as we don't get that many sweltering spells in an average summer. But when you've had a few sleepless nights over the last week, you feel you have a right to complain, and even receive some form of financial recompense. I am not sure, however, who to complain to in order to get my compensation. Perhaps one day someone will cold call me just as I am about to eat my dinner, or mow the lawn, or rescue the cat from a sticky situation, and offer me the help of their dedicated team of advisers to negotiate a suitable sum of compensation from whomever is responsible to pay out for these things. The government, perhaps. Or the banks: they always seem to be dishing out compensation for something or other. It is very generous of them.

In the meantime, I am running out of ideas about what to do about sleep. I try opening windows: it doesn't seem to have much effect. My elementary knowledge of physics tells me that there should be a temperature gradient between the super-heated air within the bedroom and the relatively chilly ether of the great outdoors. And yet the heat refuses to rush headlong down the slope, but just hangs around as if it had something important to attend to, and going outside would be just too much of an inconvenience. This has started to undermine my confidence in classical physics. Despite all the hypothesising, you can't argue with the evidence.

Slam

– There you go. What did I tell you?
– What did you tell me?
– Andy Murray. Winning Wimbledon.
– Yes. Of course. A wonderful achievement... What did you tell me about it?
– Didn't I say he would win?
– When was this?
– Oh, ages ago. Didn't I?
– I'm not sure...
– Straight sets. 6-4; 7-5; 6-4.
– Did you give that much detail? I think I would have remembered. It doesn't ring any bells.
– I don't understand how you can have forgotten.
– Did you write it down anywhere?
– Write what down?
– Your prediction. If you had written it down, and dated it, in the presence of witnesses, it would have helped.
– Would it?
– And placed it somewhere safe. A bank vault, say.
– You're not very trusting. Perhaps I just have a talent for these things.
– Predicting major sporting events?
– Yes. The only downside is I only manage to get it right once every 77 years.

Shade

It's turned warm again. Not usually surprising for July, other than the weather has been variable this summer, with grey wet autumnal days interrupting the sunny spells. But the last few days have erupted into sweltering heat again. The worry is that the weather has peaked too early: I don't go on holiday for another 6 weeks, by which time who knows what will have happened weather-wise. Clearly there is no point starting to pack yet. Not for another 5 weeks and 6 days anyway.

I am never very good at managing my summer wardrobe. It looks pretty much like my winter wardrobe. I know it is the same physical wardrobe, one of those built-in affairs which you could not easily change for something else without a lot of re-decorating, but I was meaning the clothes inside: what I wear doesn't vary all that much during the course of the year. I do generally wear less when it gets hot, but it needs to get very hot for me to do something as radical as wear shorts, for instance. And summer is generally long gone before I get around to finding my sun-glasses. I have been thinking of a hat recently: perhaps it would provide some beneficial shade in the heat of the day. And I could use it to keep the snow off in winter. But you have to traipse around shops to buy a hat; and I'm never really sure it's worth the effort.

Lost in the woods. It was days before I was found.

Nest

– Cat seems to have taken a shine to boxes all of a sudden.
– How do you mean?
– Cardboard boxes. She likes to sit inside them. When they fit, obviously. We're talking shoebox size here, not anything too small.
– Like egg boxes.
– Egg boxes are far too small. And would be uncomfortably shaped, even if they were bigger.
– You must buy a lot of shoes.
– No, hardly ever. I just happen to have received a few parcels recently in similar-sized boxes. When I leave them on the floor, Cat sits in them.
– Perhaps try not leaving them on the floor.
– I know. But I feel her life must be fairly empty and uneventful at the best of times, so I don't want to deprive her of one of her few innocent pleasures.
– But you then have a living-room floor littered with shoebox-sized boxes.
– Yes. I know.
– Isn't her cat bed the same sort of size? And soft and cosy to boot?
– She seems to have lost interest in her cat bed. I don't know why.
– Perhaps it's a subtle signal to you that it could do with a wash.
– Do you think so? I mean, not that you agree it needs washing, but that you think Cat would feel aggrieved enough to drop a hint in this way.
– You should never underestimate the way cats think. They may appear flighty, fickle, unable to concentrate fully on a matter of importance for any length of time, yet underneath it all they can be quite single-minded when they want to be.
– But what should I do about the cardboard boxes?
– Try reasoning with her. Slowly remove one box a day and see if she notices. I'm sure cats can't count. At least, not very well.

Median

– July already. The months slip by so quickly. Halfway through the year already.
– Such is life.
– Sorry?
– I was just trying to find something consoling to say.
– And?
– And that was it. A little word of consolation. In the face of the unswerving inevitability of time's onward march.
– It was not so consoling.
– Sorry. What did you expect?
– I don't know. Perhaps something more uplifting.
– Such as that you should cast aside futile thoughts of how you've wasted the best years of your life, and instead focus with renewed enthusiasm on making the most of each precious day? To live deep and suck out all the marrow of life?
– I guess so. That sounds a bit more positive.
– I wish I could help. I'm not so good at the motivational stuff.