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.