Wireless

I'm reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in Italian on my kindle. I figured it would be complicated enough but not too difficult since it is aimed at middle-range children, and so it has proved. One of the most powerful memories of my childhood is coming home from school in winter with my brother and sister, lighting the fire to warm a freezing house, and settling down to listen to CS Lewis on the radio. Children's Hour, it was. No television then. Oh, the magic of it! We were rivetted to the wireless, barely breathing as we followed the four children on their adventures. I hope some of the magic will still be there, but in Italian. Yesterday I went to see Angels in America, live from the National Theatre, about the AIDS crisis as it unfolded in America. It is a very powerful play, not very comfortable viewing, over four hours long. The cinema was nearly empty, and I had the back 10 rows to myself. Several people left after the first act which lasted for nearly two hours. I'm glad I went, but the waste of lives as the powers that be hedged and shirked and buried their heads in the sand was very upsetting and frustrating to be reminded of.

Hugo still has a whiff of cow dung about him, but I have to confess that I rather like it. You can keep your pig and your chicken output, in fact the farther away from me the better, but who could object to cow and horse? I blame it on a near-lifelong rural or semi-rural existence, and a game we used to play as children in Craigie's field in Ireland called "Nelson's Good Eye". It helped us build up strong immunities.

I weeded around the pond yesterday, gently hoeing the earth where it has become flattened and baked by the sun. So after the heavy rain last night I shouldn't have been surprised to see that the pond water is now completely opaque for the first time this summer. All that run-off loose earth. I only knew there had been a storm because the two girls in the filling station where I went to get my paper this morning were chatting about it. "We was flooded down Parham way this mornin'" said one. "You could scare get along the road that was so deep in water." "I never heard no storm," responded the other one, leaning on the counter with bleary eyes and propping her head on her arms. "I had a right old night in the pub and can't even remember gettin' to bed. That didn't have no effect on me then, that didn't." I was with the second girl, though I hadn't had a right old night. Glass of Sauvignon with my chicken, that was all. And I had the window wide open too. Come to think of it I did hear the wisteria cracking against the glass, and I cursed the two fat near-fledgling wood pigeons which are still there overspilling the nest right under my bedroom, stopping me trimming the long tendrils back. Get you gone, I cry silently, but every morning when I peer down at them and they look up at me with frightened eyes, my heart melts. Stupid creatures. But still creatures.

Challenges

We walked around the fields this morning before I went to work, and suddenly there were three small leverets running for their lives with Hugo thundering after them. Drat, damn and blast! When one veered off he followed, and it was an hour and a half before I found him again. The good news is that the gaiters stayed on and his dew pads were unharmed. The bad news was that he had been running through the manure that is currently being spread on the back fields, and he stank. I was so late for work I decided to just take him straight to Penny and Roger's, and they, old troopers that they are, gamely accepted him after I'd rubbed him all over with a towel to get the worst of the mud off. Apparently he plonked himself down on the floor and slept. He didn't even ask for his usual treats. The gaiters had had a battering but were intact, so now they've passed the test I shall buy a few more pairs. But I'll never let him off the lead on a CAB morning again.

The near field was finally stripped of its last barley ears earlier this week in a lull between cloudbursts, though the straw has not yet been gathered in. Several fields are as yet unharvested. But already the lower field has been muck-spread and the plough is working its way across the contours, followed by a massive flock of seagulls. Yesterday evening before I went out I was dazzled by a large gathering of swifts flashing around in the sky above me. Their physical display accompanied by lots of screaming was something to behold, but it does remind you that they will soon be off - early August is when they leave for their winter home. It's the first time I've seen them in such large numbers near my house and I don't know where they are nesting. I can only assume the insect population was worth their while.

When I dropped smelly Hugo off this morning Penny asked me if I'd like her to pick up a meal for £10 for two from M&S. OK, I said, that sounds interesting, but I wasn't expecting a whole farm chicken, retail price on the label £7.95, plus a bottle of Sauvignon, a carton of mixed green vegetables for microwaving, including fresh peas and edamame, and a packet of eight profiteroles. My eyes popped when I saw what I was getting, and at this moment the chicken is roasting in the oven, sending out mouthwatering scents. What a fantastic bargain, and such a great idea. I think I may have to go back myself next time.The chicken will last for several meals, and so will the wine. I've had two of the profiteroles already, and they are gooooood. I had been planning something simple like puy lentils and smoked mackerel mixed with salad leaves and a nice dressing, but roast chicken, roast potato chunks with lemon and thyme and all the rest, well, what can I say. Yummy?

Pushing Boundaries

We got caught in the rain as we walked this morning, but instead of turning back and putting on a cagoul we continued on our way. It was light showers, not cold or unpleasantly wet, and rather nice to be out in. I was heading for the bath and a hair wash anyway, prior to meeting a friend for lunch at the Leaping Hare, so what the heck if I was a little damp? How Hugo would have loved to encounter a hare, leaping or otherwise. He knew they were out there somewhere, he could smell them and where he caught a scent I ould see the flattened grass showing their tracks. But nothing appeared. It's a relief in a way that he hasn't found any quarry to pursue for well over a month now, but I'm quite keen for him to try out his gaiters and see if they stay in place. He wears them on every walk where he'll be off the lead, his little red and black gaiters, and many comments and questions they elicit. When I'm sure they work I'll add a few more primary colours to his wardrobe - emereld green, perhaps, and daffodil yellow. Very chic.

I looked at the "Pictures of the Day" on the Times online this morning and felt my legs turn to jelly. Luckily I was sitting down. Here it is, the most sickening, terrifying, baffling shot imaginable. Why? I ask. Why would anyone choose to put themselves in that position? Even thinking about where they are sitting makes me tremble. Standing at the full-length plate glass windows in the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Centre decades ago with my then husband, me behind him with my hands on his waist, I gently pushed him forwards. He turned around to laugh, but it was me who half fainted, ashen-faced and needing to be put on a chair with my head between my knees, well away from the window. Not an irrational fear at all, in fact very sensible, but with my feet firmly on the ground something still compels me to look.

Please tell me they're strapped in

My family are all many miles away at the moment, one in Montreal and the other in Tuscany. Both are work related, but they sound like ultra-jollies to me. One rang me from her bed compartment on a BA flight just before take-off at 6pm. The flight is seven hours long. "What on earth do you need a bed for?" I asked. "You'll be there before you'll want to sleep." As she accepted a glass of chilled pink champagne from the steward she told me she would settle back and watch a couple of films, supine and comfortable with a few nice pillows propping up her head and blankets to keep her cosy. Call that work? The other one is staying at a luxury hotel/spa complex that is housed in most of a converted but still authentically unspoiled Tuscan village. She will be the writer in residence for two weeks, and all she has to do is give three 10-minute readings from her books. Her fiance is there too, all expenses paid. Call me an old reactionary, but is that work? Seriously, I look forward to hearing all the details of both sojourns when they get back. It's called living vicariously, but I really don't begrudge them a single second of their fascinating lives. The pleasure is all mine.

Bizarre

The combine arrived as I was leaving for Snape late afternoon yesterday, and they were still at it with arc lights when I was going to bed. Alas they didn't finish cutting all the barley and baling up the straw, so both got a soaking when it lashed in the night. Farming must be stressful and often heartbreaking, what with worrying about the weather and trying to judge the right moment to harvest. Most of the fields around here haven't been cut yet so hopefully there is still plenty of time to get them done before they spoil. It must be addictive: I'm worrying now. From the upstairs window I saw plenty of hares playing amidst the stubble, but happily they had gone when we walked this morning though Hugo knew they were around and pranced on tiptoes importantly.

I've been watching the brilliant Helen Mccrory in Fearless, hooked both by her luminous performance and this gripping thriller. But I've been watching a recording, and several times during each episode it jumped forwards several seconds at the most crucial parts. No matter what I tried I couldn't make it play normally. How infuriating, then, that it was much worse in the last episode last night when the machine chose to skip minutes at a go during the parts where the plot was explained, or when a particularly poignant moment occured. I clenched my teeth in fury, powerless to halt the damage, but I did at least get to see the denouement. I just can't rely on this recording malarkey so never again, not with something as watchable as this. Say what you will about Damian Lewis, and I've quite liked him in a few things, he's not a patch on his wife. Whatever does she see in him? 

From the sublime to the perpendicular, this afternoon I went to see Alan Ayckbourn's Communicating Doors with Sammy at the Aldeburgh summer theatre. The schools have broken up and the town was full of day trippers and temporarily or otherwise resident holidaymakers, the smell of fish and chips everywhere, hands large and small clutching ice creams, and boys playing with their boats on the boating pool as they have done for decades, all boys, no girls. They were probably off somewhere inventing a cure for rabies. The play was a bit of a farce, literally, but it was a hoot and we laughed ourselves silly then gorged on lovely Victoria sandwich and coffee walnut cake. It felt as if we were on holiday too, watching the entertainment at the end of the pier somewhere in the 1950s. A real tonic.

My American friend Mike added this piece to his last email.

"A story in today’s Detroit Free Press newspaper was indeed strange. A burglar who, it seems, ‘cased the joint’ (a house in a residential neighborhood) knew no adults or dogs were home. As he went about his business he found five—count ‘em, FIVE—infants and toddlers tied up, as it were, in cocoons with blankets and bungee cords, their faces free to breathe. Evidently the parent (or parentS) tied them up to keep them “safe”. Once the burglar finished stealing what he wanted, he phoned the police, gave them the address, explained about the cocooned children, and fled. The police found the children exactly as warned. Shortly after they arrived, the mother came home, she was arrested, but first saw her house in disarray, drawers opened, contents spilled. “I’ve been robbed,” she screamed.

But how about that thief, Denise, that burglar? Warning the police! But still, plying his trade. A burglar with a heart! What a story, eh?"

Some things you just can't make up.

Time

Who knows where the time goes? Sandy Denny wrote the song and sang it with her band Fairport Convention way back when, but if she hadn't I would have. Where does it go? How can it be Wednesday one minute, and Wednesday again the next? Why are there nine weekends in a month? It's all just a matter of perception, of course, but if I knew how to slow it down I would. Here we are again with a meeting of the Italian conversation group and yet again my plan to spend at least an hour a day revising has been scuppered. And yet it seems that the less work I do the better I speak it. And so I managed to tell the others what my week has been like in a mostly fluent way, throwing in words and phrases that I must have seen somewhere and which lodged in my mind without me actually learning them. I love speaking this language, it is so beautiful and expressive. If I can only make the next week stretch to seven days I might see a marked improvement next time.

I've had plumbers in looking at the possibility of putting a power shower into the downstairs loo. It's a fairly easy proposition apparently, a quadrant shower and small wash basin with extractor fan. They are practical and down to earth, the plumbers, lovely men, but within five minutes of each of the three arriving I knew every detail of their families, their homes, their dogs, their own bathrooms sanitary choices and, variously, their happy marriages. Wha? How do they do that? So rather than choosing the best quote I'll select the man who I think will be the most bearable to have around. Unbloodybelievable!

Hugo hurt a back leg while chasing another dog on the hard stones of Sizewell beach at the weekend, so we've been taking it steadily. Again and again I'm reminded of what a lovely boy he is. At the vets today he stood patiently and kindly while his body was probed and examined and a nasty jab administed into his fleshy neck. I say fleshy because my skinny whippet, who weighed just over 17kilos when I rescued him, tips the scales at 20.4 kilos today. That's six and a half pounds extra Hugo! You're a porker! Actually the vet thinks he's fine at that weight, bonny and sleek, and so do I. She commented on his coat which is soft and shiny, and his temperament which is placid and gentle. Oh Hugo. Wasn't it my lucky day when you popped into my life.

Changes Afoot

The combines have hit the fields, and already the lower one has been shorn of its barley ears, the remnants turned into neat bales and hauled away. It should feel sad, as if summer is on the way out, but it is anything but. Lovely hot days have been the norm for weeks now, with the odd period of heavy rain keeping everything fresh looking. Today as I sat in the bath three swifts played in the sky outside my window, darting hither and thither, meeting up for what seemed to be a quick kiss and darting off again at high speed. Compared to the normal garden birds they are so striking, moving like quicksilver to reveal bright colouring. I wish they had lodged with me for once but they don't seem to be drawn here. It was a double pleasure therefore to have them visit for ten minutes.

The garden is looking quite different now from its heyday in June. Gone are the crazy displays of delphiniums and lupins, the first flowering over and the plants cut down to the ground. New growth is already showing but it won't be as impressive the second time around. The roses too have floundered after their voluptuous abundance when you could barely see the leaves for the fleshy flowers. They'll be back as well, but they're past their best. And as for the lawn, the plague of leatherjackets and the explosion of red thread have between them left it bare and patchy, a pale imitation of its old self. I've decided not to keep paying out for expensive treatments but just continue with the normal weed-and-feed routine that Green Thumb apply four times a year. Hang the bowling green ambitions. I could let film sets use it as a cheap substitute for the dust bowl of Kansas.

The newly-engaged couple visited this weekend, and the three of us together were as comfortable and happy as could be. What a delight and pleasure it is to have two such nice sons-in-law, or their equivalent. John and Ian - same name really. You never know what you're getting, but I've struck lucky twice now. We quaffed champagne to celebrate the engagement, and spent ages discussing wedding plans, guest lists, dresses. I'm as thrilled as can be. But eventually the bride-to-be had had enough and she retired to the sofa where Hugo joined her for a siesta. Ian and I? We did the crossword together. Perfect.

Rivals

My sister and I do not look alike. Chalk and cheese we are. So why did no fewer than three people grin at us knowingly over the weekend and point out the relationship? One particularly nice lady in Waitrose couldn't stop smiling broadly as we stood beside her till, as if she had just discovered the secret of perpetual motion or something. I don't know why I'm complaining. I love spotting the similarities that reveal people's family link: a slight plumpness of the lower lip, a faint pull on one eye, hair springing just so away from the forehead. You can't get away from the likeness no matter how completely different you may be in every way. At least we didn't have a repetition of a scene in Dublin over 20 years ago, when a woman noticed the likeness between us. Allegedly she decided that we were mother and daughter, and I was the mother. I didn't hear any of that, but my sister claimed she did, and laughed uproariously for the rest of her stay with me. But given that I was in my late 40s, that would have put her, at best, in her early 30s. And given too that she's nearly three years older than me, that was never going to be the case. Sisterly rivalry. It's subtle nowadays, but it's still there.

I opened my bedroom window to break off some of the longest wisteria tendrils that are threatening to invade the house, and there below me was a baleful eye staring up at me. Startled, I pulled my head back quickly as a large wood pigeon flew away with a flurry of ruffled feathers. I looked down again and saw two big white eggs in a makeshift nest of twigs. Ahh, how delightful! I loathe wood pigeons, all that sexual activity right through the year, the crashing of heavy bodies in the hedges and trees, the continual taking off and landing. But the sight of that huge mother hovering over her eggs was quite touching. I'm keeping a look-out for the babies now. Though they too will infuriate me soon as they sit on the lanes, too stupid and sleepy and slow to move out of the way of the car causing you to brake again and again.

It might have been a mistake to teach Hugo to drink out of a cup. It has solved the problem of how to get him to quench his thirst on long walks as he refuses to take on liquids that I pour out for him. But he will never turn down a plastic cup, especially if he sees me pretending to drink from it first. So I shouldn't have been surprised, as I settled in my recliner in the shade of the very hot sun with a nice cold drink of elderflower cordial and sparkling water, to see him walk over gratefully and take a long cooling drink.

He surpassed himself this morning. As usual I had carefully closed all the doors in the kitchen before I went to bed last night, especially the one to the cupboard containing his dried food, and the larder. But I might have inadvertantly left the door to the bin cupboard open. I don't keep the lid on the bin as there isn't enough space, and I came upon the entire contents scattered across the floor. It's such a shocking sight, presumably like returning to a burgled house, that you can barely take it in. There was Hugo, lounging on the sofa without a care in the world, getting ready for his exuberant morning greeting with a stretch, but I stopped him in his tracks. "Come here" I ordered him coldly, and he snuggled back into the sofa. "Come here" I instructed again. He didn't move. Eventually he came towards me, and I told him he was a very bad boy, very bad indeed. He hung his head. "Go to your bed," I said, and he tried to get back onto the sofa. "No, bed," I repeated sternly. He circled a few times, and tried the sofa again. "Bed!" I said. And then I saw why he couldn't get into his dog basket. It too was full of detritus from the bin. How I would love to have watched his antics last night as he carefully carried things over to his bed, or sorted them out on the floor. There was even a piece of courgette on the sofa itself. He had a field day, what with the remains of the chocolate cake in the tin foil. But what were the two empty packets of Thornton's mixed mint chocolates doing? And the two empty packets of Smarties? Where had they come from, and why had they been secreted in the bin under other rubbish? Sisters, eh? They may look a bit alike but there the resemblance ends. Some of us would never be so sneaky.

Suffolk Summer

What lovely weather we've been having, really peachy. I collected Hugo on Friday after work, and we stopped off at the big Framlingham College playing field for a walk on the way home. Penny was off to London for a weekend of fun with her son and looking very glamorous, so I guessed she probably hadn't taken him out. We had the place to ourselves for a while, and then a golden labrador called Henry appeared with his master. Henry didn't look young, not at all, but Hugo didn't know that. Off he flew, darting at his new friend and flying around him until Henry couldn't resist and ran too. Hugo chased him all around the field, and you could tell by Henry's owner's face that he hadn't seen such a performance for a long time. When finally the boy came back to me, the man called across: "Well, that's more exercise than he's had for months! What a racer you've got there!". Yup. That's my boy.

College sports field

We had a picnic in Orford today and then walked along the sea wall and back into the town for an ice cream. Ruth loves a picnic, and so do I, especially beside water. Back home in the evening, I decided to clear the escholzia from around the pond. It's given a stunning display until now, but I think it's past its best. Hauling out the gigantic roots and dragging the branches and leaves out of the way, I stumbled upon a nest of baby shrews that had been hidden under the greenery. There must have been seven or eight babies, and immediately three of the little things ran out. I tried to put them back but they wouldn't stay. This was awful! I covered the nest over as well as I could, and later retrieved one little chap hiding beside a stone. The babies were very tiny, but beautiful with tiny stubby tails. I hope the mother has rescued the absconders by now and they are all safe again. I won't disturb that area for a while.

Baby shrew

California poppies all gone now

Indoors again, shaken and in need of a cup of tea, I opened a new packet of my favourite Twinings Assam teabags and emptied the contents into the tea caddy. Distracted as I was by the shrew babies incident, I nearly poured the boiling water on top of all 40, instead of the one in the mug. Hugo couldn't believe that I was going to drink it in the garden, at 6.30pm. What time do you call this? he seemed to say. Can't we all go to bed now? But it was a perfect evening, hot, sunny and still as they so often are. A group of 10 or so farm workers were combing the barley field behind me for weeds, and they stopped to chat. "Your garden is lovely," they told me, and I congratulated them on their stamina, working across the field bent double in the hot sun. What charming people they are, young and strong and hard-working. Not English, natch. I forgot to ask them when the barley will be harvested, but I think it will be soon. So while Hugo slumbered indoors I feasted my eyes on the golden ocean which all too soon will be brown furrows. Carpe diam. It's the only way.