Retribution

Yesterday I bumped into my old neighbour from Wilby, young Andrew who inherited the farm behind us. Olivia and I were having lunch at the Dancing Goat in Fram, ears pricked for the phone call from the Rayburn engineer which was never going to come because I hadn't left the note on the back door for him. Olivia said Andrew couldn't take his eyes off me, so eager was he to catch up. She says I have a peculiarly charismatic effect on people which causes them to want my attention; she's witnessed it many times, she claims. I told her to go and boil her head. But it was unsettling, seeing Andrew. He told me the new owners of our old house have done many things to both house and garden, and I experienced a powerful emotion that might have been resentment, or regret, I don't know. Anyway, it soon passed when we returned home to find that Martin Junior, the Rayburn engineer, had waited for an hour and a half for me to return before leaving. I found my note to him in the car later when we went into Aldeburgh with Ruth to see Man and Superman, Shaw's manic play, live from the National. "Call me on this number," I had written, "as I'm nearby and can be with you in minutes." That's how wars start, poor communication. Luckily the only casualty of this debacle was me, and it was overcome by dining on scrummy fish and chips in the car.

Man and Superman was a tour de force for Ralph Fiennes, apparently the longest theatrical role ever. How he remembered all those millions of lines when I usually can't recall why I went upstairs is beyond me. It was 3 hours and 40 minutes long, but with a tummy full of food and the odd soothing sweet it went by quickly.

I've finally found people to build my new pond, and they're going to create a wild garden around it. Work will start week beginning 1st June. It will provide the finishing touch to the structure of the garden, and then the remaining jobs will just involve more planting here and there, and of course lots and lots of maintenance. In this vein I have two huge bags of bark waiting in the drive, waiting for me to summon up the energy to begin to lay it on the larger beds. Today is calmer, drier, brighter. I think a walk is on the cards this morning before Martin Junior attempts to connect with me this afternoon. We've been invited out to tea, so I hope the two things don't coincide. I love cake.