The Last Hours of June

I've always preferred being outdoors. Looking for houses over the years, it's been the garden I've investigated before the rooms and their dimensions, though internal brightness is crucial; if you've got to be inside make it as much like the open air as possible. And I've always walked, though never as much as since I've lived in Suffolk. I walk in the daytime of course, but once supper is over, whether it's sunny or dark, hot or cold, wet or dry, I have to get out. Alone or with company, the lure is too strong to resist. The scent of evening is intoxicating, seductive, literally rootsy. It reminds us of who we really are, where we come from. It's the same in the morning when the dew falls and is burnt off by the sun. As children we used to camp en famille, usually on trips to the Old Sod. En route for Holyhead we'd park up by the River Severn at Shrewsbury and pitch camp for the night, and those are among my most magical memories. Sausages, beans and a mug of tea, then bed on a plastic lilo while the river scents drifted into the tent. It didn't even matter much that we all bickered and squabbled as usual, all fighting our corner including the adults. Once across the Irish Sea my grandfather's field would be our base, and in the early mornings while my siblings slept in our pup tent I'd be off exploring through the wet grass. Once my father joined me, and together we hunted for mushrooms and later cooked them in a pan of butter - country butter, we used to call it, rougher and saltier than Anchor - over the calor gas for breakfast. Nothing has ever tasted as nice since.

Wheat growing behind the house

Every walk is a Proustian memory jogger, every sight and smell reminiscent of another, earlier one. This evening I was out for over half an hour after a day of feeling different, better somehow. Still a bit tired, but more energetic too. And so I ventured farther than I have for weeks. Alys's wind turbine was whizzing on the horizon despite there being not a breath of air, and the sun was soft and still hot on my head and skin. I drank it all in thirstily, the view from my window for so long finally in close-up. It's impossible to describe the beauty of the countryside on this late June evening. The wheat fields are losing their early green and gently turning pale. The peas plants have sprouted cream flowers, and the sky is voluptuously, lazily bright despite the late hour. The land feels bountiful, the sky benign and generous. It's such a privilege to inhabit this space.

I've finally pinned or sewn the hems of my four new garden room curtains, my print from Chikako is on the wall, and a favourite old lamp at home in the corner. My books are ranked by Penguin Modern Classic or author, as colourful as a full-size collage. It's by far my favourite room.

Ash to Ashes

Ashton, the young man who helps me in the garden, came yesterday to deal with the detritus left after Did chopped down the hazel tree. It was a job I was looking forward to doing myself, but common sense, my new and not at all welcome guiding spirit, told me not to be such a daft mare (she's a bit vulgar) and leave it to someone who isn't permanently breathless and exhausted. So up he came from Fram on his scooter, went into the tool shed which we call his dressing room in full biker gear and emerged from behind the closed door looking like a gardener. He's a terrific young man, hard working, sensible, clever, strong and well organised. As can be seen from his picture, he's also charming.

He took one look at the mess, seized pruning shears, saw and rake and set to work. Two hours later he'd created a pile of wood that can be sawn up for the woodburner at a later stage by him, and bonfire fodder which I can easily move and reduce to ash myself. Ruth has been staying with me, and the two of us sat in the summerhouse in the sunshine, gossiping, drinking tea, and occasionally turning to watch him work. In the end what he produced was so methodical, so tidy and fit for purpose that we were both impressed.

Suddenly the rain came down by the bucketload, and we fled into the house as Ash shot off to the shed. A few minutes later when it was obvious we were in for the long haul, I called him to come indoors. I thought he'd be a bit shy in the company of two women old enough to be his grannies (ouch!) but not a bit of it. He asked to see what I'd done to the house, admired everything especially my wall of books, and then told us of his plans to be an engineer which he's currently studying to become. He's been an absolute boon to me, and I thank the lucky accident that brought him to my garden when his mum bought my stable and he helped to dismantle it. What a kid. He'll go far.

Earlier I drove along the road to Saxmundham and spotted a path newly mown through the centre of a wheat field. It looked so beautiful and inviting, a straw-lined slash in a sea of sharply carved green leading to a wood and beyond. Normally I'd have abandoned the car and set off at once to stride it, but I knew I wouldn't get far so instead I got out to photograph it. Oh dear. I have never seen more than one car at a time on that road, but suddenly it was a motorway. Two vehicles flashed around the bend towards me, shock registering at first me and then my car and then the oncoming traffic. Yes, two more cars had shot forward in the other direction and were immediately upon us. I closed my eyes and waited for the screech of tyres, the scrunch of metal, the sudden pain, but they didn't come. When I looked again the vehicles were disappearing into the distance. Heart thumping, chastened, I wobbled back to the car. Was that the vulgar one tittering as I drove shakily away? Perhaps I should take her advice more often, damn it.

Pins and Needles

Remind me never to have a tattoo. I've been stuck with the slenderist of needles by an acupuncturist in an effort to clear my energy channels and promote the healing process and, oh! how it hurt. The feet are so sensitive, such fragile appendages despite their brutal load-bearing function. I jumped, twitched and yelped as spasms, tremors and electric shocks shuddered up my legs, but eventually the needles were tweaked into their correct position and I relaxed. If you feel sorry for the acupuncturist, spare a thought for my charming dentist who visibly blanches when I appear in his surgery every year. It's not my fault. A childhood of terrible dental experiences culminating in being tied to the chair anaesthetic-free while a vicious drill jabbed at my nerve has left me terrified of pain. Should I ever be threatened with torture unless I revealed my children's whereabouts, I'd willingly hand over all their contact details, and likely times of accessibility. Let's hope it never happens. Anyway, I now have a herbal tonic and a fat bottle of Metatone recommended by a friend, so am feeling positive of an early recovery.

While I've been languishing indoors, the most beautiful freesias have appeared outside in two of my pots. The bulbs were a gift in the dark days of late winter, and I obediently if rather numbly planted them. I've never managed to grow freesias before, but there they are, bright heads on strong delicate stalks, a triumph of Nature.

The rain is crashing down outside now, with syncopated thunder adding its sonorous overtones. Both are competing with some Oliver Messiaen piano music on the radio, and to be honest the storm is more attractive to the ears, even if the view has been obliterated. The view will return. Messiaen will not.

The Art of Art

This week on and off I have been invigilating an exhibition of wood cuts at Snape Maltings. The job is a few hours at a time, and doesn't entail much apart from greeting visitors and occasionally selling postcards and prints. I lie down as soon as I get home, frankly exhausted. But it's an enchanting experience. The artist is a Japanese woman who is passionate about Benjamin Britten, and this exhibition was inspired by Peter Grimes, and particularly last year's production of Grimes on the Beach which she attended. Music is her muse, and she is already working on her next series based on Owen Wingrave. Respect. She is a delightful woman, reacting with childlike pleasure when her work is praised or when she has good fortune.

Chikako Goto

 In Japan she has three part-time jobs to support her as abstract art and Benjamin Britten are not slavishly worshipped apparently! So she invigilates at a gallery, serves tea and washes up at a cafe, and picks mushrooms, these tasks leaving her mind free to create. Her candour is so refreshing, her enthusiasm infectious, and her art is wonderful. We've become very friendly, and today I offered to store her frames at my house until she hopefully returns next year with her Wingrave pieces. She was ecstatic, and immediately told me she would only agree to this arrangement if I took one of her framed woodcuts as a present. Strewth! I had been trying to decide whether or not to buy one, and couldn't make up my mind. I protested, honestly I did, but she insisted no deal unless I agreed. What could I say? People with gentle, innocent souls are so endearing. Just listening to her talk touches me deeply.

Good Morning: Act 1, Scene 1, Peter Grimes

Other stuff: you use much less petrol when you're confined to the house with illness, which has to be good news.

On Sunday I was delivered of a sofabed which I bought on Gumtree. I know! This was a first, but with three new Laura Ashley sofas already in residence, and the price of new, properly comfortable sofabeds being extortionate, I decided to hunt out a second-hand one. The people who owned it work for M&S and bought it there. It's in a nice shade of buttermilk, has a virtually unused sprung mattress, and cost just £180. It was meant to be a 'buyer collects' arrangement, but they decided to spend Sunday at Snape and so delivered it to me. I have to say I'm thrilled with it. Not only do I now have another double bed so I can accommodate four visitors at once, but I can laze in my garden room and enjoy the views in complete comfort. Such bliss.

The courgette plant that Nigel gave me several weeks ago is now both flowering and fruiting, and I intend to have a little yellow fellow in my stirfry tonight. It's a tiny precursor to what I hope will be a productive vegetable and fruit garden next year. What joy it is to grow your own food. I hope the deer are listening: grow and eat your own, not creep in and eat someone else's. I'll be watching.

The Longest Day

Yesterday was the longest day, not the same thing, apparently, as Midsummer Day which is on Tuesday. I can vouch for the former. Every minute, every hour, dawdled by like a reluctant schoolchild so that by 5pm when I was hungry and ready to cook my supper I couldn't believe how early it still was. Enforced idleness and me are not natural bedfellows. I allowed myself a little gentle stone collecting, but otherwise mooched between the house and the summerhouse in the warmest sunshine, trying unsuccessfully to do the last few clues in the crossword, and struggling with "A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing" by Eimear McBride, according to the critics the latest in a long line of brilliant Irish writers and the new James Joyce. It's an extraordinary book alright, but the grammar and syntax are so strangulated that the reader battles to translate its opacity into something comprehensible. "I knocked it back in two sittings," crowed the Listener's reviewer, "and I'm still reeling." I knocked back 20 pages in two hours, and I'm reeling too. There's an amazing story in there somewhere, and the raw descriptions of rural poverty and the brutal hand of the Church are agonisingly vivid. But an easy read it ain't, and my scrambled brain wasn't up to it. I'll go back to Ronnie's soothing "The Time by the Sea" where I can relax and luxuriate.

By 10pm I was ready for a short stroll down the lane, and immediately spotted my old friends the deer, leaning casually into the copse of trees over the field. My eyes are so attuned to my landscape now that I can immediately pick up something unusual. I fancied that they were waiting expectantly for the final setting of the sun, sensing, perhaps, that the glory days are over and from here on in they will be getting shorter. By 11 it was still bright, but my camera is not good enough to capture an evening sky and the flash blurred the image. It's imprinted on my retina though, several inches of pinky grey lit from below while above a distinctly drawn line lurked a darker layer of steady cloud. Today has started dull and still, the deer having crept away noiselessly on delicate hooves during the night. As I said, it's all downhill now.

Denise, Loitering Palely

Post-viral fatigue. Wouldn't you just know it. I'm more exhausted now than I was at the height of the bug. Was asleep in the summerhouse earlier when Nigel, my sweet, lovely Halesworth bridge partner rang me to say he and his wife are available if I need anything at all doing. Was tempted to mention the towering laundry basket, but just thanked him profusely. He's hardly a stranger now, but oh! the kindness.

Because I'm an old trooper I decided last week to behave as if I were better - "act as if, and it'll become reality", as the psychotherapists say. Not a good idea. Now that I'm a pukka Snape volunteer I've done my first two stints invigilating at the John Cage exhibition in Aldeburgh. It features his 4.33, the silent piece, and many were the bemused and disgusted expressions of people hoping for something more interesting. Several people up for the Festival seemed to enjoy it though, and the blank score was a particular draw. Cage's idea are interesting philosophically, though his insistence that the composer should not impose himself on the music and the audience seems a bit contradicted by him naming the piece and setting any parameters at all. Roland Barthes' "The Author is Dead" was a topic of much irritated amusement when I was at uni, and books continue to be published at a phenomenal rate notwithstanding. Someone has to stir up debate I suppose.

I used my free ticket for Owen Wingrave on Wednesday, and chatted to an old lady in the seat behind me who had been to see the film of the same the night before at Aldeburgh Cinema. It was wonderful, she told me, to see a young Janet Baker and Heather Harper sitting on the floor in Mummy's drawing room in Aldeburgh with Benjie and Peter, all so happy. My mind struggled to take in what she was saying. Who the hell was Mummy? Imogen Holst? Alas, the performance began before I could ask her, and by the first interval I was feeling so unwell that I quickly scuttled out. It can't have been Holst because she never married, though she was a fulcrum for the Britten gang in those days. Who then? Perhaps I'll never know.

I've got the message now anyway. My body has finally collapsed under the strain of the past year, and I really need to let it recover. I'm going to do my other four invigilations, at Snape this time, but otherwise I'm crawling under the metaphorical blankets and hibernating for a while. I'll be a new woman when I emerge, one a bit more like Meryl Streep I fancy.

Garden, rampant

'Did' and I have had a grand afternoon together, felling trees, making logs, burning leaves and twigs. He has removed the hazel tree, increased my log pile by about 15% (it's a big pile), and entertained me hugely. Such a nice man, with a great sense of humour. He's a bit of a prankster among his friends, and loves playing tricks. We chatted about Akenfield, and he was very familiar with historical conditions for agricultural workers in Suffolk, although he doesn't come from farming stock himself. Old boys he knows still talk about the way they were treated by their farmers, owned like serfs and worked almost to death. Bad days indeed. He told me a story about old Clanker Clements who worked for Sir John Blois at Cockfield Hall. Clanker was known for never doing as he was told, and one day he drove a horse and tumbril full of muck and sludge through the main archway leading to the hall, an utterly forbidden act. Sir John saw him coming, and hid behind the arch waiting for him. When old Clanker came by he said, "Well now Clements, just you empty that cart right by here", (pointing at his feet). "But sir," started Clanker. "Do it" ordered Sir John. "But sir," he tried again. "Just do it Clements," shouted Sir John. So Clanker upended the tumbril and the contents flooded onto the immaculate York paving and, worse still, Sir John's expensively shod feet and smartly tailored legs. I dreaded how this story was going to end, but 'Did' was laughing. Sir John just grinned and said "Ha ha! For once you've done as you were bloody well told!" and strolled away. Nothing more was ever said.

No more hazel

As my back garden continues to get pared to the bare essentials in preparation for its make-over, the front has burgeoned and blossomed with ferocious speed. Roses have bloomed with an excess bordering on vulgarity, the fresh and the decaying heads  interweaving together as the dead-header continues to neglect her duties. Summer comes upon us so suddenly and voluptuously that the light garden duties of spring are quickly overtaken by an urgency that threatens to overwhelm. Already I am thinking soothingly that, come the autumn, everything will be manageable again, and I can cut back, thin out, prune and remove.

Growing like triffids

I thought I'd found my perfect dog, a 4-month-old whippet pup called Bowie who had caused an allergic reaction in his owners' small child, and was being unexpectedly rehomed. Alas someone got there before me, and the little chap has found his 'forever family'. I'll continue to search, and now I have 'Did' looking out for me as well. He has six dogs, and his girlfriend has four. Sooner or later my own little person will turn up. Just the one thanks.

Bowie

Dingly Dell

Things to report: when you're ill your fingernails stay very clean, at least if you're me; washing up is a tedious and interminable bore, but I'm still shying away from getting a dishwasher because it just doesn't feel 'green'; wood pigeons have sex the entire year around, most of it within hearing of me; nettles have the sweetest smell in early summer just when their sting is at its most lethal.

Sex was very much on my mind this morning as I watched two hares in the field behind me. At first I thought it was one animal racing around in endless circles, but then I realised a male was closely chasing a female for the purpose of mounting her. On and on the chase went, the male determined not to give up his pursuit and the female equally set on preventing him from satisfying his natural urges. I watched with increasing horror, realising that the sally would have to give in or die in the process. For a moment I felt relief that I am not an animal, yet this is the lot of so many women, the international news a constant reminder. I turned away and buried my head in the crossword. Ostrich.

Denuded hazel, still blocking the view

A burst of energy brought me to the garden shed earlier where I gathered up secateurs, machete and saw for a job I've been itching to do. At the bottom of my garden running towards the field are three trees, a hazel, an elder and a field maple. About a hundred yards into the field stands a solitary oak, and when the land had been freshly ploughed you could clearly see that a hedgerow once traversed the field from my trees to far beyond the oak, the earth a distinctly different colour along this line. I love trees, but my hazel has been coppiced many times over the years and now needs a firm, nay brutal hand. Dozens of shoots have sprouted in the ground around its main trunks, and high above, the ugly dark green leaves dominate the skyline. I decided weeks ago to have it reduced, and 'Did' is due on Tuesday to do the job. But I've been itching to get started, and now I have. The garden is littered with long slender branches, and already there is more light. But a quandary has been uncovered: I wanted the area around these trees to be a sort of dell, to be planted with bulbs for spring and wildflowers for the summer, and to house my beehive when I get one. Without the bulk of this tree it will be much more open, less of a secret spot. What to do? I should wait for my country oracle to advise me on Tuesday. As long as he doesn't suggest ferrets.

Akenfield

I'm re-reading Akenfield, and being seduced by the language, the people, the countryside and above all by Ronald Blyth. I met Ronnie (I know, a bit presumptuous, but he was a friend of a friend) at the Charleston Festival a few years ago, and was enchanted, as was everybody present, by his easy loquacity, his ability to conjure up without notes images and memories from long past and recreate them as if yesteryear were just this morning. I got him to sign a copy of At The Yeoman's House, but was disappointed to find later that this new book was merely a piece of publishing artifice, a stylized cobbling together of this and that with no real substance. But I'd forgotten what a gifted writer he is, and in Akenfield, rightly hailed as a modern classic, he weaves his love of Suffolk, its people and its history into an irresistible and beautiful masterpiece.

His passion matches my own, or should it be the other way around? Anyway, I feel privileged that the village I live in remains unspoilt, intensely rural and geographically intact unlike the two villages, Debach and Charsfield, that he merges into the fictitious Akenfield. My village is the answer to an aching heart, its beauty lying not so much in idyllic cottages and farms, though there are plenty of those, as in the timeless land surrounding it, its ancient smells, its unchanging patterns. Yes, the fields may be bigger now to accommodate huge farm machinery, there may be fewer hedges, certainly the numbers of birds and wild mammals are down from half a century ago when he wrote Akenfield. But I only know the village now. And it is absolutely complete to me, a thing of wonder that I can never get enough of. I feel as if I've been heading here all my life. Ronnie says that the English have a peculiar affinity with the land, and spend a large part of their lives plotting to get back to the rural world their forebears knew. And so it is for me. I thank my lucky stars a thousand times a day that I'm here. I may be "Alone Again, Naturally" as Gilbert O'Sullivan once sang so sadly. But I wouldn't be anywhere else.

Roses and sweet peas and chocolates delivered this morning, sweet William from last weekend - I'm feeling thoroughly spoiled and cared for. Still ill, but my spirit is soaring.

The Patience of Job

God tried Job in many different ways, pushing him to the edge of tolerance, punishing him regardless of how good he was in order to test his character. But did God offer Job the chance of a beautiful new garden, and then pull it away from him every time it nearly became reality? No he didn't. I don't know how Job put up with his continued misfortunes; I think he may have had ECT or been lobotomised at some point. How else to explain his extraordinary placidity? Suffice it to say that he has been mythologised for his extraordinarily cruel suffering, so maybe that was a sort of reward. I am not Job. I can take so much, and then some more, and then maybe a little bit extra for luck, but then..... Today I learned that the new date for my garden is 7th July. JULY!! It'll be winter before I get it properly working. And how unfortunate that it was actually fine on the last planned date, despite the immediate weather forecast showing heavy rain. Some lady in Diss got my slot instead, and apparently her 20 tonnes of soil were moved and settled without mishap. Ahem.

I'm still feeling ill, coughing to the point of exhaustion when I'm already spent. I wonder how much longer it will go on for. It's clearly not a bacterial infection, though I must finish the course of antibiotics. I have to be well by Saturday at the latest, as I am invigilating an art exhibition at the Peter Pears Gallery in Aldeburgh, part of the Aldeburgh Festival. This is my introduction to being a volunteer at the concerts, when I'll be allowed to wear the hallowed red ribbon and medal. I have six gigs during the fortnight of the festival, some in Aldeburgh and some at Snape. Working at Snape will be a dream come true. I spend enough money there on concerts anyway, so a few free ones will come in handy.

Yesterday I made chicken soup, the sort your Jewish grandmother would make for your chest infections if you weren't Irish. Proper boiled carcass, garlic, carrots and onions. If anything will cure me a steaming bowl of that will. I'm trying to distract myself from the garden with thoughts of food, but it's still out there, baked dry and completely unproductive apart from some stubborn nettles and a strip of grass that Did missed, despite telling me that he'd sprayed in both directions, north to south  and east to west. Ahem again.

The Never-ending Garden Saga

Bearing Up

The big old hare who looks as if he's fought a few battles in his time often hunkers down in the field behind my house. His coat is auburn with rich golden streaks, and there are darker patches where he may have been hurt and scarred over the years. He looks honourable, and his normal gait is dignified and slow, though when he runs he goes like the wind, all hare still despite his age. I like to see him out there, doing his solitary thing. I wonder what he thinks about all day in his form, the name given to the shallow depression in the ground where hares settle in the day and sleep at night. No cosy rabbit burrows for them, where they can curl up underground on fleecy linings and be safe. In biting cold or crushing heat alike they are always exposed. They must be some of the toughest mammals in Britain. He's a survivor, indominitable, and he inspires me.

It's the same miserable story here, and I'm feeling limp and dispirited again this evening after a lovely day. I dared to hope earlier that I was getting better, but it was short lived. A surprise visit this afternoon from old friends was very cheering, but the excitement has proved too much for me. Yet I think there was an improvement, and I dare to hope that there will be a few steps forwards tomorrow before the step back again.

It's not all bad. There's a fat organic chicken roasting in the Rayburn, its skin massaged with butter and rubbed with salt and pepper, a half lemon stuffed up its nethers. The chef is recreating one of the best meals I've ever had, which consisted of an identical chicken, roughly bashed new potatoes, French beans and a gravy to surpass all gravies. The basis for this latter came from a friend of the chef's, a gourmand par excellence, who had passed on the remains of one he had made the night before. It consisted of a jug of dark brown jelly, and when melted into the pan of chicken juices turned out to be simply sensational. What was in it? we all kept asking. It's incredible, unspeakably delicious. It turned out to be an awful lot of Fino sherry reduced to its very essence, so rich it could almost walk by itself, and so it is going to be recreated tonight for the delectation of weary bodies and parched palates. The smells are filtering through to me. I may be feeling better already.

Pithering

I've slunk around the place today, utterly without energy but happy to see the bright sheen on the greenery outside that signals a glorious day. Indoors the sun shows up the dust, the grubby corners that I hadn't noticed before and, worst of all the windows. When the last job is completed inside and out I'm going to treat myself to the mother of all window cleaning sessions, with windowsills thrown in. I've got my man earmarked already. In the meantime my eyes tend to look straight through the murky glass to the views beyond, the shining beech leaves across the lane catching my eye frequently as they flicker up and down in a vague breeze. I collected a posy of flowers for my weekend guest's bedroom, and put them in the loo brush holder which is now my spare vase. You'd never know ...

This morning the cheerful postwoman brought me a second penalty charge, this time for driving down a bus lane during my recent trip to Town. There is a photograph of my car in the offending lane, snapped by a vigilant camera. On Monday I had a similar notice for entering a Congestion Charge area without a ticket. Who knew? Couldn't they let first time offenders off with a warning, guessing that they were just innocents abroad? I don't remember seeing that I'd entered a Congestion Area, and would certainly have bought a ticket if I had. Two lots of £65 fines. Think of the meal I could have eaten for that! Nothing to do but grit my teeth and cough up. I hope that's the last of it. It's a long journey from Streatham to the edges of Essex, plenty of scope for elephant traps.

Despite the highlighting of fluff balls under the kitchen table and streaks on mirrors, the light in the house is wonderful. At any time of the day there is a spot where I can sit in the sun and, like a cat, I follow it around. 

Giving In

My resolve has melted and I've started taking the antibiotics. I've no idea if they'll work or not, but I figured that the gorgeous doctor who said he wouldn't touch them himself is young, fit, strong and healthy, and so his immune system would kill any germs that tried to infiltrate his body. I, on the other hand, seem to have knocked myself a bit flat by all the activities of the last year and more, and my body isn't fighting back as well as I hoped it would. Another day waking to a pounding headache, tight chest and exhaustion is enough, and by 11am I was weakening. Daughter said no, sister and friends said yes. Majority rule.

I had to race out of the house not long after taking my first evil tablet. The carpet shop rang and asked if they could come in a few hours and lay the last piece of carpet, the one in the hall. I had postponed this job because I had decided to reopen a doorway from the kitchen into the hall. This had been sealed off completely by a previous owner, but the light switch was still in position, and assiduous tapping showed that though the space had been plastered over the doorway was still there, a perfect rectangle. Bashing it out and creating a new door was going to be a messy business, so it made sense to hold on the carpet. The door is there now giving access to the hall and stairs without having to go all around the house and through the sitting room, and everything is painted - except the new threshhold. I had to varnish it, and quickly.

I can get to Fram and back in 13 minutes when I'm in a hurry, and I was, but something made me take a route I'd never used before. The sun was shining after a dull, flat morning, and the lane marked Byroad beckoned as it never had before. I didn't hesitate, but swung the car to the right past the vineyard. I didn't know where it would come out, and there was no time to look at my OS map. Oh, it was the right decision. There are lanes in Suffolk where the loveliness is almost too much to bear, superlatives wither into dust, and you can only gaze, soak it all up, and feel yourself renewed. And then, as if enough wasn't enough, suddenly there was the mere with its grazing cattle, and a clear view of the castle rising high above me, its romantic castellations and towers like something from a fairy tale, while opposite reared the Gothic turrets of the college. I'd never seen them like this before, and I felt dizzy with enchantment. If I recover quickly now how will I ever know if it was the antibiotics or the byroad? 

Framlingham College

Framlingham Castle

I bought the varnish in a blur, almost forgetting why I was there, and dashed home the normal way. It took another few minutes to find a suitable paintbrush and get the first coat done. By the time the men came I was ready for them, heart steady again. 

Taking Stock

I'm dismayed to find that, far from getting better, I'm actually much worse. I've got a chest infection and infected sinuses, and the doctor has prescribed me antibiotics. This surprised me very much as I thought you had to be on your deathbed before they gave you the likes of Amoxicillin these days, but after he listened to my back he suggested I take a course. "How do you know it's a bacterial infection?" I asked him. I don't, he responded, but there's a 50% chance it is. "Would you take them if it was you?" I asked. "Absolutely not," he replied "unless I had pneumonia or something." That's exactly my own view, but he persuaded me to have them at home in reserve in case I got worse. In a few days if I'm better I can ignore them, and if not I have them there to take if I choose to. I'll throw them away if I don't use them, I told him, but he thought I should hang on to them for another time. It seemed a cavalier if pragmatic attitude towards my health, but one I appreciated and generally share. The doctor was devilishly attractive in a very laid-back way, and from his beautiful clothes to his handsome face and the tapered fingers idly tapping my details into his computer was almost too perfect to be true. My admiration, of course, was purely aesthetic.

Eschscholzia

My friend Ruth persuaded me to see him, and she it was who drove me there. Lunch and supper were also provided by her, and it was a curious relief to surrender to being looked after. Good friends, wonderful at the best of times, are worth their weight in gold in times of need. We go back a long, long way, she and I, to when our children were tiny, and it's a delightful coincidence that we've ended up, both of us alone, living just a few miles away from each other. On the way to the doctors I got her to stop the car outside a garden where one of my favourite flowers abounds. It's called California Poppy, Eschscholzia, and though I've admired it for years I've never managed to source a supply of the seeds or plants. I obviously haven't tried very hard because, googling this week, I have found several suppliers, and will try and grow them when my garden is made. They thrive on dry, sparse ground, so I'll have to create the conditions they like. The sight of these flowers, so delicate and fresh, so bright and somehow so happy looking, is guaranteed to make me smile and feel some of that happiness myself. Well worth the effort of making them perfectly at home somewhere near me.