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I lay in the garden on my recliner, resting as I've been forced to agree to do instead of tackling the 1001 delicious jobs awaiting me: the hedge needs clipping back, the beds need weeding, bulbs have to be planted, and shrubs must be relocated. But not by me apparently, alas. So I lounged supine, staring upwards into the wide blue yonder, when suddenly an aeroplane hoved into view. It drifted across the sky, wings outstretched high in the air, but as I gazed I realised it wasn't a plane but a bird. A marsh harrier. It was huge, and it floated on thermals way up in the distnce. Then I spotted another one moving towards it, slowly, slowly, and as they met they caressed, moving over each others bodies with great tenderness, tendresse as the French have it, hovering wing to wing in a joyful act of love making. They billed and coo-ed, they lingered together, they touched beaks and heads, then they wafted away only to come back together again. It was as beautiful a thing as I have ever seen, and I watched entranced until they moved out of my vision. Were they a pair, or was this a spontaneous conjoining? I'll never know.

I tried a bit of weeding, sitting on my kneelers, very little effort involved, but the result was the same. Ruth came over for the afternoon prior to us going into Aldeburgh to see Victoria and Abdul, and before supper we went for a walk down the lane. It was a little farther than I can manage at the moment, and I realised I had overdone it and couldn't make it back. As I waited by the verge, watching a reluctant Hugo being led away, she went to get her car and drive me home. Ridiculous.

My entire family is going to be away soon, off to Virginia, to Paxos and to Crete. But I seem to have lost my thirst for adventure, Blakeney notwithstanding. I blame it on Hugo who I simply cannot ever again leave with strangers, but the truth is I love being here and feel no urge to travel. Not even the darned wood pigeons, who have laid another two eggs in the nest in the tangled wisteria just beneath my bedroom window and crash around from early morning until late can turn me against this place. I just missed the opportunity to dismantle the twigs they call home and stop them rebuilding it, but I can't intervene now, godlike, and touch the eggs. Two more massive babies will hang on to their hopelessly inadequate home until they are forced to fly, and for all I know they will mate straight away and begin the cycle again. Ah well, there's no place ....