Some LIKE It Hot

Living here in rural Suffolk, my favourite time is the summer evening when the dew is falling, the light is failing and the scents of the countryside are powerful and evocative. It always reminds me of camping as a child when the end of the day, and the beginning, were full of thrilling smells and sensations. It still feels like being on holiday, the sort where I turn longingly to my love and say, god, I'd give anything to live here. And now I do. Back from holiday in the south of France where the sea and the sky meet in an ever-changing variety of dark blue and turquoise, the exact shades impossible to describe, I'm relishing the more earthy greens and golds. The barley field behind me is still turning towards the colour of butter, while the trees and shrubs remain fresh looking, unbaked as yet by the hot sun.

My glamorous companion

I've brought the back garden under control again after my absence, clipping edges, planting pots of geraniums and weeding everywhere. It's looking nice, not lovely yet but agreeable. Coming home late last night I went down to the summerhouse to retrieve my book, and in the moonlight the garden seemed to be huge, gloriously spacious. The front is a different matter. Broad and open in the winter, it's completely overgrown, a riot of colour as they say. Some of most striking plants are self-seeded, especially the poppies which have gone completely mad everywhere. In this space I don't know where to begin. Soaking the densest spots has helped to loosen the soil before removing weeds as tall as myself. Japanese anenomies which I usually love have colonised one huge area, and the echinops with their blue thistly heads have taken over another. In the autumn I'll shift great batches of them to the back, but it's too late now. The intense heat is slowing me down and preventing me from working. There is no shade in this garden in the middle of the day, in the middle of the year.

Last night working at Snape I asked a few people who'd gone to see the Andreas Scholl workshop students give a recital of their polished music how it went. Everyone raved about the Swiss girl, Veronique Rapin, whose throaty mezzo voice and aria from Handel's Tamberlaine soared above the rest. Apparently she's been based in New York but is planning to move to the UK. Take note, Covent Garden. You'll be sorry if you don't.

The Great and the Good

They came from Aldeburgh, London, even Switzerland in the case of a couple who had flown in specially that morning, to attend the premier of Harrison Birtwhistle's The Cure. One area in the foyer was reserved for the Press, another for VIPs, and then there was the majority who are the stalwarts, who met and mingled and talked and talked and talked. They were silent during the production though, and I haven't seen an audience quite like this one before. It was very Covent Garden, very Glyndebourne, very Wagner. And of course very Britten. Even Jonathan Reekie, the former Snape boss, returned, adding a touch of glamour. It was the opening night of the Aldeburgh Festival, and I was lucky enough to be there. The place was packed and there was a waiting list. The music wasn't exactly beautiful, but it was dramatic, forceful and interesting. Librettos were handed out to everyone and they took them gratefully, eagerly, but it was too dark to read. At the end Birtwhistle and his team came to the front to take the applause which included loud cheers. As I said, not a typical audience. I really, really enjoyed being on duty.

The production was in one of the smaller halls, and the conductor sat at a table just in front of the first row. In the interval I tucked his chair right into the table to make room for people to get past, and immediately the person sitting behind it pulled it back out. I looked askance, but the beautiful boy in black sitting next to this person came over to me, introduced himself as the assistant conductor (!!) and said it was fine to push it in, but would I be kind enough to pull it back out again once everyone was seated so that the poor conductor wouldn't have to do it himself? I agreed, of course, and did so, crossing the hall from where I was sitting. He was inches away from it, and gave me the thumbs up and a beautiful grin. Being assistant conductor clearly didn't include this simple job.

The great and the good were still chattering away when I left. The performance had clearly excited everybody, and they all had so much to say. "Wha wha, wha wha wha," they went. "Wha wha wha wha." Yes, well. Whatever.

Reunions

I met up with Chikako Goto at Snape this afternoon, and handed over the artwork I've stored for her for the past year. She's setting up her new exhibition in the Pond Gallery, based on the performance last year of Owen Wingrave, and already she's planning her return next year with The War Requiem. She loves Snape! And Benjamin Britten's music!!! Her enthusiasm and optimism know no bounds. After we'd greeted each other with a hug her friend, a very pretty Japanese lady, put her hands together and did a formal bow. It felt very graceful returning her salute.

It was very hot at Snape, and so I decided to treat myself to an ice cream. As I wandered through the emporium I spotted the young Swiss mezzo from Tuesday, Veronique Rapin, browsing through some postcards. I couldn't resist it, and spoke to her again. She remembered me, and at once thanked me again for my kind words the other day. I told her I had gone home from the masterclass in an altered state, and had found a clip of her on Youtube singing Rodrigues in Handel's Alcina. "Oh, but that was years ago and I was so young then." Yes, I agreed, and her voice has become richer and more mature, but it was still wonderful then. I also told her I had found a recording of another mezzo singing the Tamburlaine aria she had so memorably performed, "and it was great but it wasn't thrilling like your piece was," I said, "or at least was at the end once you had relaxed." "Oh I was so nervous, singing for Andreas Scholl whom I admire so very much. It was terrifying." We discussed how he had made her work by dancing in front of her and getting her to copy him. He is a very good teacher, and a very kind and sensitive man, we agreed. I left her then and wished her luck in the future. I don't suppose she'll have given me another thought, a beautiful young girl on the threshold of a great career I hope. But I won't forget her. Music: I could talk about it and think about it and listen to it all day. It fires me up, it churns up my emotions, it calms me down, it relaxes me. It has all the answers to all the great questions. It is everything.

The North Wind Doth Blow

It's cold enough for snow, especially when you're standing in the teeth of the wind. Absolutely bitter it has been for days, and seems set to continue until Saturday when it finally veers through an easterly to a more moderate westerly. Yet again the men were out in the field, pulling up the unwanted wheat. They must have been freezing. I ventured out to water my pond, or at least the wild flower seeds surrounding it, and then nipped back inside again where it was cosy and warm. Helen had booked a table at a restaurant in Aldeburgh for lunch at 12, but I knew it would be a mistake. Bridge starts at Leiston, five miles away, at 1.15, but players need to be there by 1pm so they know how many tables to set. I told her, I persuaded her to miss dessert, I chivvied her, but still we didn't get there until just after 1.10. Walking in to that crowded hall with everyone settled at their tables was an experience I do not want to repeat. I approached the director: "Mo," I said. "I know we're terribly late and if it's too much we can easily leave." But she wouldn't hear of it, and had us sorted in seconds. Not so some of the others who would tell you what to wear if they thought they'd get away with it. All of this brings the naughty schoolgirl out in Helen, and she stuck out her lower lip and her chest and gave as good as she got. Good for her: she's braver than me.

I came home via the council tip again where I deposited no fewer than 10 bags of stones, rocks, pieces of brick and nasty clumps of clay. It feels so good to get rid of this stuff. Val is coming tomorrow to help me clear some of the front beds. Everything is burgeoning wonderfully out there, but triffids are growing too and they have to go.

As the sun slowly slipped towards the horizon I found the remains of last night's bottle of wine, and was just about to take it to the summerhouse when I looked into the garden room. It was bathed in golden light, warm and welcoming. I took my glass in there instead and settled down with my holiday reading which I've picked up too soon and can't put down. It's M M Kaye's The Far Pavilions, a massive read which has completely engaged my interest, and if I'm not careful I'll have read it before I go away. What an erudite writer she was, so well read. I'd give my toe nails to have an ounce of her talent.

From the Sublime

They were out there again today, the three farmers, while the icy north wind blasted the countryside. I stepped outside briefly to hang up the washing, and it was shades of Mrs Tiggywinkle as the shirts took on the shape of people and the sheet became a bloated white monster. But there were no little ones to hide fearfully behind my voluminous skirts: the last one left on the 6pm train on Sunday.

Sid called by, ostensibly just to check if I was still mole free. But something wasn't quite right as he mooched around, and eventually hetold me he hadn't been very well. Not the hip this time, which is still causing him gyp, but anxiety attacks. "I'm right for a coupla weeks, then that hit me again low in me belly. Worried, like, hurtin'." I commiserated with him, and then he said, "I can tell you, you're right nice and you won't think I'm cracked." And so he told me he'd met a woman who he liked very much, and she seemed to like him. Only she'd been in three abusive relationships, and he was worried that he might do something wrong and scare her off. She'd moved up from Berkshire to escape the last one, and he wasn't sure how to behave. He was worried half to death. All the time he talked his chin wobbled and tears welled in his eyes without spilling. Oh Sid! I told him he's a lovely, gentle man, and that's why she likes him. He should just be himself and let it take as much time as it needed. "Enjoy it," I suggested. "It sounds like a wonderful thing to have happened. Good for you!" He left at last, telling me it had helped to talk to a sympathetic friend. Oh Sid, I say again. Any time.

From Sid I went to Snape for an Andreas Scholl masterclass. I'd only been to one before, and that was Pavarotti. I thought it might be quite entertaining. Wow! Was it ever. The first two singers were sopranos, lovely, competent, moving. Andreas was very articulate and thoughtful, obviously full of musical ideas and suggestions. Then came a fabulous young counter-tenor who already seemed to be the full package, and his time with Andreas was creative and vocally glorious, his singing so expressive and beautiful. Lastly came a young Swiss girl, petite, dark, very attractive, so tense you could have bounced off her. She sang an aria from Handel's Tamerlano, her voice completely incongruous from such a small person, a mezzo verging on contralto. The music was incredibly beautiful, but her singing was dead, dull, awful, her face an agonised pantomime. I cringed, and wanted to leave it was so painful to hear. She must have been nervous. She held her right hand stiffly, fingers straight and stuck together. Oh god, what was wrong? Andreas knew. He got her to sway with him, to mirror him as he danced and she sang. The voice started to lighten, the throat open out, the chest expand and relax, then she began smiling, and suddenly you heard the full power and magic of her voice and it was like being wafted up to heaven and held in ecstasy there. I felt an explosion of emotion inside myself, but I managed to contain it. Afterwards I spoke to her. "You have a really great voice," I told her, like she didn't know. "I know I'll hear it again." She thanked me, and I walked away knowing I'd witnessed something special.

What a day. I ended it in the summerhouse with Sarah and a bottle of wine. It might have been the sublime to the ordinary, but don't knock the ordinary. It's the stuff that the days are made of, when the dreams are done.

The Chaff From The Wheat

As I worked in the garden today three men appeared in the field behind me, chatting amongst themselves - an almost unheard of occurrence. I looked up to see who they were and they all waved merrily at me. It was my young Icelandic friend, plus Alys's husband and father, and the job they were doing couldn't have changed in centuries. By hand, bent double, they were walking through the barley picking out clumps of black wheat which, if left, would adulterate the crop and spoil it. It was a medieval job, timeless and back-breaking. Staying in a group, they worked their way systematically from side to side, stopping to load up the truck when their bundles got too large to carry. Part of me wanted to join in, as it's the sort of job I like, but I had my own labours to attend to. Sarah from Native Gardens came and prepared the pond for planting, tucking the edges of the lining under the soil and sowing wild flower seeds all around. It looks a bit bare at the moment, but it'll soon be full of marginals and lilies, and once she left I started planting around the perimeter. Lobelia cardinale went in in a clump of three, five iris Siberica made another grouping, and other perennials that I've never had before and can't remember the names of, though they're all carefully labelled, were added to the picture. Otherwise I continued hoeing the large area around it, and now it is all clear and neat: the pond makes just the sort of eye-catching feature I hoped for.

I was accompanied by a blackbird all day, which serenaded me as I toiled. Hearing it drew my attention again to the fact that it sang alone, for even the skylarks were silent. Later a blue tit sat on the chimney and carolled away, but it is a desperate situation and I can't believe that it's getting worse, not better. I wonder if a CD of birdsong played at full volume outside would entice birds from other gardens to favour mine? Or I could just listen and pretend it was real.

Dumping All the Rubbish

Kitty always brings the barn owl with her: invariably on our evening walk we spot it quartering the field behind Sarah's house, and at one point it flew straight at us, its little creamy face focussed and keen. She grabbed my arm in delight, and made me stand still while we watched its aerial peregrinations. Luckily for me she always brings flowers too, and her gift this time was a lush creation from an award-winning florist, flowers hand-picked by herself. Before she arrived I took a load of garden rubbish to the council tip, including the rocks and stones unearthed by the pond diggers. A few houses ago this used to be our near-weekly sport, heaving mountain of weeds and clippings to our local depot, and feeling that wonderful sense of satisfaction as we left it behind, another clean slate. For a good few years now the gardens have been huge, and everything disappeared on the bonfire regardless of the size of the heap. I can still have fires here, but it was good to clear out the unwanted debris. But I'd forgotten how busy these places get, especially on a Saturday, and especially too as this one 10 miles from me is the only free one remaining. Stressful isn't the word, as you wait in a queue for a slot, and then lug your bags to the right container, hoping one of the attendants won't spot that some of the contents should have been deposited elsewhere. But the feeling of "good riddance" was as fresh as ever as I drove away, much lighter.

The pond has been filled with water and I'm awaiting the return of Sarah tomorrow who will finish off the edges, and maybe do the planting too. I dreamt last night that she had come while I was out, and the whole pond had been covered with earth and planted with hidden marginals. The trees behind it were festooned with plants that apparently rooted into the branches and then hung low over the pond. "Gosh," I thought, "isn't that marvellous, how tidy it all is," before clocking that actually there was no visible water.

The swathe cut around the field

I must stop having these anxiety dreams. All will be well and all will be well. All is well.

Lark Rise in Cransford

I was woken this morning by the sound of horses going past my house, hooves ringing on the tarmac. I came to briefly, noted what I was hearing, and promptly returned to sleep only to include them in my dream. I was trying to smuggle a woman with children out of some bad place - it was unspecified and unclear where it was but the job was urgent. The children were pale and listless, and the converyance in which I had hidden them was airless and very hot. I hitched the vehicle to a horse when the engine failed, and was urging it up a steep hill while its feet kept slipping and skidding backwards. My anxiety was growing unbearably, and when we finally reached the top of the incline I looked inside to check on the children but they weren't moving and .... I woke up with a jerk. Horrible dream! Where does this stuff come from?

Larks soared all day above the barley field yesterday, rising so high that at one point I couldn't even see them with the binos. They are bursting with joy, though on a sunny, still day who isn't? Their song is continuous, compelling, and to listen to them is to smile with pleasure. They nest on the ground where the crops conceal their babies, and maybe they feel safe now because I haven't seen a magpie for several days. When I could still focus on their flight I noticed that they seemed to spiral upwards and then hover, fluttering, for several minutes, singing all the time. It's an amazing feat of flight and stamina.

I came face to face with a big old rat last night, my second in as many months. It was the sort of evening when you just couldn't be indoors, still light at 9.30 when I'd eaten my meal and succeeded in knocking a spatula covered in food onto the floor, scattering the mess far and wide. I strolled down the lane, wandered into the field, sat outside the summerhouse, just being part of the lovely day. It was the first really warm evening when no jacket was needed. Just across the lane from me was the rat, and we both stood still and watched each other for a bit. It was a mangy thing with a stunted tail, and it didn't look as if it could run away if it tried. There's nothing like coming face to face with your worst fears, and feeling them dissolve. It wasn't a lovely thing, but it wasn't terrifying either. Country rats are probably different from urban ones: they aren't fresh out of sewers, and they don't have a cunning, desperate look about them. Eventually I moved, and it turned and disappeared into the ditch. I walked on into the night.

The Earth Moved

Research has revealed the "appalling care for the elderly in their homes", according to today's paper. But I've been saying this for  years, ever since I became elderly, technically at least. Well, more like weeks actually. But I know it's true. For example I have to make my own meals, do my own gardening, clean my house myself. Appalling, yes. But will anything be done about it? Probably not.

In the spirit of not even being able to dig my own pond, Seth and Jack from Native Gardens arrived today to do the job for me. It was just as well they did as it was a heck of a job. The pond measures three metres in diameter and is one metre deep at most, so a lot of soil came out of the hole. We expected it to be clay but in fact there was very little apart from a layer at the top. The rest was lovely topsoil, but the deeper they dug the more horrible rubbish they discovered, including at one point a small piece of asbestos. It seems that whoever built the various extensions on this house buried their nasty detritus and covered it up again. I wouldn't have minded a Victorian rubbish heap, but this was very 21st century: cans, bottles, plastic bags. The guys bagged the mess, and the spoil was used to make a bank behind the pond, which will be planted with wild flower seed. It'll be a picture when it's matured a bit.

A young man on a ride-on mower turned up in the field next to me and proceeded to cut a swathe around the edge, and into the barley itself. Odd, I thought, and I popped around to see what he was doing. Cutting out the rogue black wheat that threatened the quality of the crop, apparently. The upside for me was a lovely new path around two sides of my boundary. He turned out to be from Iceland of all places, a musician working here for the summer to perfect his already fluent English. He loves Suffolk which he says is in stark contrast to the flat, frozen, treeless landscape of his home."It's beautiful though, Iceland, isn't it?" I asked him. "You would probably think so," he replied with a sour grin, "but I don't."

Much later, when everyone had left and I'd eaten my supper, I walked into the field and followed the new path around the edge of my garden. The air was sweet with the scent of new-mown grass and barley, and the sky was just beginning to show pink. Nothing moved, not the graceful heads of the barley stalks, not a hare's listening ears showing above the crop. It was silent too apart from the final song of the blackbird. I looked up at my garden from the field end where the pond is now sited, and it looked beautiful, like a garden you might spot from a train and stare longingly at until it was out of sight. My heart swelled with happiness; I could feel it growing inside my ribs. Some of those old cliches are so appropriate.

The First Cut

Seth making headway

Pond with backdrop, as yet unlined

Stroke of Luck

Village life is lovely. Small statement, big truth. The village I live in is spread along nearly a mile of lane humorously called The Street. At one end lives the man who sells vegetables from a stall beside his gate, great veggies and lovely fresh eggs. I'm at the other end, the last cottage before the 30mph signs. There's no village green, no pub, no school, no focal point apart from the village hall where parish meetings are held and the occasional celebratory function is arranged, though the less said about those the better. People are not on top of each other, they don't interfere or fuss or push themselves on you. But they're there. This morning Mike, a village stalwart enjoying his retirement, stopped by to deliver the parish magazine. As we chatted I asked him if he knew of someone who might water my garden while I'm away on holiday. "I'll do it," he responded immediately. "I didn't mean you," I said quickly," but he was adamant. "It'll be a pleasure," he told me, and he meant it. I took him into the back where the donkey paddock he remembered has been transformed, and he was full of praise. I know he'll enjoy caring for my plants in my absence, and I couldn't be more relieved that someone responsible will be keeping an eye on things. I suppose good neighbours can be found everywhere, but I like to think of them as a village speciality.

On Thursday my new pond is being dug out, and then later the lining will go down, a bank will be built behind it from the clay spoil and spread with wild flower seeds, and planting will take place. I'm having water avens, flag irises, great spearwort, common water crowfoot, bog bean, amphibious bistort, brooklime and marigolds, and ten black ramshorn snails. It's going to be beautiful, a real eye catcher. And tomorrow the man who built my summerhouse is returning to do a few repairs, especially to part of the roof that suffered in the last terrible storms a few months ago. Given that the company is based in Scotland I feared that I would never see them again.

Last night I went to Italian feeling down, arriving a bit late, and was greeted rapturously by Wendy whom I sit next to. "I'm so glad you've come," she cried. "We're working in couples on this exercise, and I've actually done all the work for a change to save you doing it!" She was so pleased with herself, and disappointed to the same degree when she realised we haven't got to that section yet. We chatted about our mutual Altzheimer's fears, and I left feeling that my brain is just fine, perhaps a little stressed still from all the changes I've made, but in full working order. How else could I more than anyone in the class have remembered both the past and future tenses of all the verbs we discussed? Sara bene, as they say in Italy. It will be OK.