Mooning

The first solstice full moon since 1967, in Sagittarius to boot, my star sign. Must be portentous. The longest day and the sky flooded with moonlight as well as the residue of sunlight. Who could stay indoors? Not me, and not Hugo either. The heavens were splashed with red, purple and pink, a change from the day which saw some of the heaviest rain in ages, grey/black clouds gathering overhead explosively until late afternoon. There was neither a breath of air nor a sound outside, but the rich smell of ripe elderflowers wafted around us, mixed with other intoxicating scents brought out by early rain and late sun. A thousand times a day I give thanks for this wonderful place I have ended up living in, almost an accident but surely as pre-determined and inevitable as light after dark.

I've struck lucky on the gardening help front. It's like waiting for a bus: nothing for ages then two come along at once. And so I have Val tomorrow for three hours or so, and Nick on Saturday for the same. In that time, with my interim labour, surely we'll get on top of all the weeds, front and back? I hope so. I have various visitors planned for the next several weeks, and I want the place to look its best. Last summer when Caroline came for lunch she looked around the garden and said, "Oh Denise, I'm so sorry for you, you have so much still to do!" And her face was a picture of kind anxiety. I'm hoping she'll have a different impression this year. I feel as if much has been achieved, but other people's expectations are not necessarily the same as mine.

I texted my wonderful sports physio today asking for an appointment. He literally unstuck my neck, shoulders and back when first I moved to Suffolk eight years ago, the result of decades of tense hunching over a keyboard. It took years to undo, twice a week, but he got there eventually, triumphantly crying out one day, "I've got a whole hand under each of your scapulas! They came up straight away!" And so they have remained, eliminating backache, neckache and general shoulder stiffness. I owe him so much. Imagine my horror, then, when he texted back to say he had stopped doing physio because the bicycle business he has set up has taken off. "Nooooooooooooooooo!" I texted back. I feel as if I've lost a leg. How will I cope?

Walking Hugo yesterday we passed a group of teenagers. "Where's Marseilles then anyway?" asked one. "Is it the capital of France?" "Dunno," replied another. "What is the capital of France?" "Is it Switzerland?" asked a third. "No," said the first one scornfully. "That's the capital of Germany." It's good, isn't it, being part of the EU. If we stay, perhaps we can bring our education system up to the standard of other Europeans'. With ignorance like this, we should be ashamed of ourselves.