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.

Small Victories

There was no possibility of taking a walk this morning, and so I took advantage of the wet weather to catch up on some much needed cleaning. Things had come to a head when I lay in the hall with my leg up the door jamb, as you do, stretching out my hamstrings, and from that unusual angle noticed cobwebs all around the bottom of the front door and lodged in the corners. I looked closer in other rooms, and it was the same. Could this really be my home, or that of some arthritic, myopic crone? I had to act quickly. I decided to work my way around the house systematically, starting with the smallest room, the cloakroom. I'm talking windows, door panels, light fixtures, pictures and skirting boards here, as well as loos and wash basins: none of your namby pamby flicking a duster around. There are no fewer than 11 rooms in this house including the hall/stairs, and then there's the summerhouse. Flies and wasps love it here, and they leave evidence of their visits on every glass surface. It hasn't been easy, but I've made a start now, and I'm pleased to report that my winter lethargy has been replaced by a summer fitness from all that hard work in the garden. Even washing windows didn't defeat me. OK, I didn't get all the way around. It's a big house. Cut me some slack. (Note: slight hint of internal critical monologue creeping in here, but I've banished it again).

Another small achievement was playing an opera, an old Sunday tradition. It was Richard Strauss's Die Frau Ohne Shatten, one of my collection with just a small emotional attachment to my lost past. Yes, it was painful at times, but it's such a thrilling piece that I was mostly uplifted and inspired. No, that's not absolutely true. "Mostly" wasn't quite the word, but "sometimes" still felt like a small victory. It's a strange fact that I've always felt a strong affinity with the lost Habsburg Empire, mainly through music. Austro-Hungary doesn't feature in my genealogical line as far as I know, there being mostly Murphys, and that other murphy, the spud. Yes, we had cabbage, mostly boiled to a pulp, but it didn't really resemble saurkraut or borscht. So why the affinity? Der Rosenkavalier, for example, always provokes an acute sadness that is not just personal but also belongs to a lost ruling class that I could never have supported, never mind been a part of. There's a yearning in the music, a wistfulness that always makes me think of 19th-century Vienna. All nonsense of course, but Strauss's music is invariably beautiful, and I've broken my duck now. I might try Verdi next. That'll be a test.

All On The Doorstop

There were hares all over the place when I walked out late this evening, but not in the fields. As I marched down the lane a big thumper, slightly threadbare but so large I thought at first it was a muntjack, came cantering up the hill towards me. I stopped, he stopped, and then he came on and I thought for a moment he was going to lollop straight past me. But he realised I wasn't a tree, and turned on his heel. It was such an odd encounter, to be so close to a hare on the road, that I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd spoken to me. "Nice evening, thought I'd stretch me legs. You from round here?" No sooner had he disappeared than another hare, much younger this time, slimmer too, came towards me and got even closer before it halted. I froze, enchanted, and he came nearer to within just a few feet, narrow face and head twitching slightly as he tried to work me out. After a few thrilling seconds he jerked away and was off down the lane. But there were more of them in the verges and hedgerows, crossing and recrossing the tarmac, and I wondered if it was a special night. The sun was a crimson globe just above the horizon by the time I got home, and the sky was flushed pink. Maybe it was too pretty an evening for them to ignore too.

Earlier I'd watched the wind ripple through the barley field below my study window. It's a very strange sensation, like viewing the sea but knowing it's not water. The field changed rapidly from light green to pale gold as the breeze set it in constant motion, swirling backwards and forwards, up and down at a giddying speed. I felt quite dizzy watching, telling myself it was just a field of barley while my eyes could see otherwise: a stormy ocean maybe, or an agitated inland loch. It looked almost treacherous, but was as benign as a lawn. Apparently that field, my nearest, used to grow only vegetables, and last year it was a mass of peas. What luck that Farmer Alys has changed the pattern.

This doesn't really capture the effect

Van Gogh knew what I meant

Heady Times

The peppery scent of lupins, sweet and sharp, is one of the most evocative in the garden. Others are lilac, wallflowers, antirrhinums, phlox, honeysuckle, and even irises as I discovered this morning, each one causing your nose to follow it zigzagging from flower into the air like those old Bisto ads - or was it Oxo? - sniffing sensuously. I did this as a young child, wandering in a happy daze through an overgrown, neglected garden on my way home from school, the flowers and shrubs an unkempt tangle of heady sweetness. It was like heaven in there to me, a haven of pleasure, the silence broken only by birdsong, my thoughts confined to my immediate surroundings. It's like that again now, my life, and I'm happy to have returned to this state. Yesterday only the occasional passing vehicle broke into my reverie as I worked in the garden, the sun so hot on my head I had to wear my panama. Those constant internal arguments - "I'm going to sit down now and have some lunch", "No, do a bit more. You'll never get finished!" have ceased, and my head is filled instead with peace. I mull over what to do to break up the big expanse of lawn, but it's a languid, easy mulling without conflict.

What on earth do we do in the winter though, I wonder? The comparative inactivity must be killing. In these warmer months I'm on my feet literally from morning until hunger and tiredness drive me in again at the end of the day. When the nights draw in and the days shorten I do the crossword, I read, I learn Italian, I swim, I play bridge, I walk. In the evening I often watch television in front of the woodburner. I have been known to do some housework, sometimes. But it's nearly all sitting down, and it makes my muscles seize up. I dread the thought of it. Our forebears probably welcomed the slowing of time, the chance to rest and catch up, but it's not something I look forward to. Not a bit.

New Modus Operandi

I read in the paper yesterday that the cure for tiredness is on tap, literally in a glass of water. Apparently we don't drink nearly enough, and it occurred to me that with the strenuous work I've been undertaking in the garden on a virtually daily basis, I really should be taking on more fluids. This excessive exercise has naturally made me quite exhausted, but yesterday and today I downed two litres throughout the day and, lo! I'm not nearly so puffed. Even my legs don't feel so heavy. Am I just fitter now, or has this simple remedy worked?

I've been mowing the lawn in a different way, starting at the outside edge and moving in ever-decreasing circles until only the centre is left. I'm still covering the same area, but it seems easier somehow. I cut it this morning, another change from my usual habit of finishing the day with this task by which time I've been so knackered I've had barely enough strength to put the wretched machine away. It was quite pleasant in the hot early sun, and I took frequent rests to take calls from an 0208 number that later became international and then unavailable. They were all from a man who told me he was from Windows, and if I would just switch on my computer he would remove all malicious- and spy-ware, and all viruses. Are there really people left who fall for this scam? He must have liked my "Do you think I'm stupid?" because he's been pursuing me ever since, though I no longer pick up the phone.

In preparation for the new pond being created next week I've been clearing the ground, and as the hot afternoon drew lazily on and the blackbird started his singing, I lit what will be my last fire to burn the dead and dry detritus I raked up. It's a very big area though, and I wonder if my pond dimensions are too small at a diameter of 10 feet. While the fire roared in the sudden wind I set up my reclining chair, opened a beer and lay back with my book. Now this was luxurious living. I should do it more often.

A Waiting Game

I nearly didn't get away at all at the weekend. My Saxmundham friend Helen said I could leave my car outside her house and she'd run me to the station, and collect me when I returned. I arrived as arranged, got out of my car and realised my suitcase was sitting on my drive. "Go, go!" shouted Helen. "I'll be waiting with the engine running ..." and so I turned around and sped back home, and I mean sped. Luckily there wasn't too much traffic. I made it in time, but when I tried to collect my pre-booked tickets from the machine I fed in the code for collecting a parcel from Fram Co-op. Gawd. What am I like? There were two women sitting opposite me on the train, two very smart, well-dressed and well-made up ladies from the neighbouring county, and they were real characters. Their lippy chat with the inspector - "Why shouldn't you lot work on BH Monday if we are?" - was very entertaining, and when I asked him which platform the London train left from in Ipswich and he told me 1, they corrected him with rolling eyes. "It's 4", they told me. We had a chat as we waited for a goods train to pass so that we could get into the station. "If women ran the world this would never happen," the blond told me. "Parcels before people? Men, what do you expect? Women would ban football, ban children, make pubs women only, wine would be tax deductable, no sport on TV apart from tennis and rugby. Everything would run efficiently, men would be given subservient roles. Pillocks!" I'd vote for you, I told her, and she laughed merrily. "That'll be the day!" But with Sandi Toksvig's Women's Equality Party, don't rule it out.

I was thrilled to notice that I'd slightly underdone the Suffolk bird scene. All day I've had skylarks in the barley and wheat fields behind my house singing and soaring, soaring and singing. Other birds too have been celebrating the warm weather, and there has barely been a moment's silence. I've seen tits, chaffinches, goldfinches, blackbirds, robbins and horrible magpies, but no swallows or swifts, or even house martens. Where are they? Not here anyway. But maybe all is not lost.

Newly planted ex-wallflower bed

Where the pond will go

Wallflower bed waiting to be resuscitated

Planted

Lupins and delphiniums coming out

Main shrub bed with bark

Lemon-scented azalea

These past two days I have removed all of my wallflowers, dug the beds they occupied, and replanted with crocosmia, hemerocallis, and the first batch of dahlias - Bishop of Llandaff. The soil in the two beds was intransigent - total understatement - but I soaked it and gradually it came to heel. I also planted some more phlox in the perennial bed, though I suspect they're really stocks, and two pots of what will be red "flars" beside my pink roses. It's been massively hard work but so satisfying. I'm not there yet, but I'm on the way. And the body seems to be coping with the strain. I hope that isn't going to be famous last words.

And No Birds Sang

I was awakened at dawn by exultant birdsong over the weekend, and the shocking realisation that it is not thus where I live. The boisterous cacophany outside my bedroom window at 4am was one I haven't heard for years, and the sheer volume of jubilant singing was overwhelming. I was staying in the village of Rodmell which nestles under the Sussex Downs and is famous for being Virginia Woolf's home and featuring in a book called To The River. It's a far cry from coastal Suffolk, though both are beautiful in their own distinctive ways. Suffolk is less hilly, and more agricultural, while Sussex is far more verdant and arboreal. As I lay in bed, feeling distressed about the now even more obvious decline in the number of song birds in my home county, I realised that the presence of so many trees, and unfertilised and unpesticided cow and sheep fields makes a haven for them. Of course there are song birds around me: a blackbirds serenades me throughout the day, and ends my evenings with his pure, poignant tune. But the sheer number of singers has vanished here as it has in so many parts of the country. What have we done? And where will it end?

Another voice thrilled me this weekend as my hostess played me a recording of her son, then aged 10, singing the solo in his church choir a few decades ago. The hairs on the back of my neck lifted and I felt tears spring to my eyes, it was so beautiful, so sweet and earnest. Listening to this little boy soar above the body of the choir, singing his heart out, was such an uplifting experience that I felt purged of all tension and cares, and almost reborn in a state of perfection. This is what music does.

Again on the subject of voices I was enthralled by Colm Toibin at the Charleston Festival on Friday, talking about loss in his latest novel, Nora Webster. Modest, self-deprecating and funny, he told us that he was the model for Donal, one of the two brothers traumatised by the absence of their mother who left them for many months unvisited in the care of an elderly aunt while she stayed with her sick husband in hospital. When he died she got her boys back, but they were now changed. Donal had a terrible stutter, and so does Colm, though nowadays he has mostly learned to hide it. Speech impediment or not his discourse and memories flowed, and they had a strange effect on me. The easy poetry of the Irish voice, lilting, musical, convivial was mine once, because that was how I learned to speak. Until I was eight I lived in Ireland, and with the abrupt removal back to England the accent had to go, to be replaced by a harsher sound, words annunciated clearly and coldly, at least to my protesting ears. But his voice is my voice, my natural voice, and listening to him I thought that other things can traumatise too, and lead to a conflicted identity. To me my voice never sounds quite right, but lapsing back into Irish wouldn't either. Something has been lost, and I'm the worse for it.

The Gloaming

I walked from 8pm to 9, down lanes, through fields and woods, all the time marvelling at the sudden spurt that Nature has put on, evident all around me. The barley fields, most beautiful of all crops to my mind, are more than thigh high now where a few days ago they were struggling at calf height. Did old agricultural workers measure the crops thus, using their bodies as yardsticks? I fancy they did. In the breeze the barley waves and dances, the bright green foliage lightening perceptibly by the day and swaying like a tidal ocean. The wheat is a much darker green, a more stolid plant altogether though once it turns golden it takes a lot of beating for its sheer beauty. Elsewhere there's rape, lots of it around Sweffling and Rendham though less here, acres of bright, dazzling yellow though the scent compares poorly with wisteria which it resembles. The wind had dropped, the rain cleared, and the evening was too beguiling to stay indoors and ignore. But alas! My walking shoes, new a few years ago but little worn, let in the water. And by the time I'd fought my way through the dripping chest-high cow parsley that fringes the fields so prettily, I was soaked. Still, it was a joy to be out. These long, bright evenings won't last for many more months, and the thought of what will follow is hard to take. And so I get out when I can, a solitary figure stomping along footpaths carved through fields or skirting their edges, occasionally going off piste when the view looks better elsewhere. Sure, what harm am I doing?

And Then ...

For 24 hours I've been blocked out of my blog. I was astonished to discover that it felt as if my right arm had been chopped off. No, it was worse than that. It was a bereavement, and I was the casualty I grieved over. Ludicrous, I know. Like writing any diary, you put your whole self into it, warts and all, and to be without that facility was dreadful. I had lost the connection via Bookmarks when my computer crashed, and I couldn't remember the details of the email account I'd used to set it up. Backwards and forwards I went with Google, messaging and texting until I despaired of ever accessing it again, and then suddenly I was in. The relief! But another appliance has gone wrong. Downloading a photo to go on the previous post, my still confused computer has done something to my camera which is now flashing Card Error messages when I try to use it. Oh Gawd! Is this ever going to end?

Like

An ongoing conversation overheard from a cubicle in John Lewis in Cambridge, between the two bright, educated young women who were in charge of the changing room, virtually verbatim:

- Like, I'm going to be away for, like, six months or more.
- Like, how do you get to, like, stay there for so long without, like, a visa?
- I, like, sign on with their social security and, like, get an ID and, like, then I can get
  a job and be, like, legal and everything.
- But, like, do you have money saved for, like, travel and everything? I mean, like,
  flights to Australia are, like, really dear.
- Like, I've worked here for, like, six months since graduating and, like, I'll stay here
  for another, like, three, and then, like, I'll have enough for a return ticket and, like,
  a few weeks in a hostel as well.

Absolutely true. I just couldn't believe it. I wanted to find another adult and repeat this conversation in front of them to see if they realised how DREADFUL it is, but I took my Whistles jeans and left. Lovely girls they were too. How did this ever happen?


Back home from Cambridge I spent the next two days in the garden moving, inter alia, a ton (literally) of bark from the drive to the flower bed. One ton just about covered it at a depth of three inches, so hopefully that'll be the end of my weed problem there. Just another ton to move to the end bed, but not today. Amazingly my shoulders and arms didn't ache afterwards. That's an awful lot of shovelling. It was a lovely weekend, sunny, hot and windy, and I got a lot done. Both evenings I finished at about 7.30pm, and was able to relax in the summerhouse with a Peroni before cooking supper. Such bliss. In the end I got my Rayburn fixed, and now my computer too. The dishwasher repair person is coming on Thursday, but I'm not that bothered. Funny how money has a habit of just wriggling out of your pocket and into someone else's. It's, like, a real bugger.

Retribution

Yesterday I bumped into my old neighbour from Wilby, young Andrew who inherited the farm behind us. Olivia and I were having lunch at the Dancing Goat in Fram, ears pricked for the phone call from the Rayburn engineer which was never going to come because I hadn't left the note on the back door for him. Olivia said Andrew couldn't take his eyes off me, so eager was he to catch up. She says I have a peculiarly charismatic effect on people which causes them to want my attention; she's witnessed it many times, she claims. I told her to go and boil her head. But it was unsettling, seeing Andrew. He told me the new owners of our old house have done many things to both house and garden, and I experienced a powerful emotion that might have been resentment, or regret, I don't know. Anyway, it soon passed when we returned home to find that Martin Junior, the Rayburn engineer, had waited for an hour and a half for me to return before leaving. I found my note to him in the car later when we went into Aldeburgh with Ruth to see Man and Superman, Shaw's manic play, live from the National. "Call me on this number," I had written, "as I'm nearby and can be with you in minutes." That's how wars start, poor communication. Luckily the only casualty of this debacle was me, and it was overcome by dining on scrummy fish and chips in the car.

Man and Superman was a tour de force for Ralph Fiennes, apparently the longest theatrical role ever. How he remembered all those millions of lines when I usually can't recall why I went upstairs is beyond me. It was 3 hours and 40 minutes long, but with a tummy full of food and the odd soothing sweet it went by quickly.

I've finally found people to build my new pond, and they're going to create a wild garden around it. Work will start week beginning 1st June. It will provide the finishing touch to the structure of the garden, and then the remaining jobs will just involve more planting here and there, and of course lots and lots of maintenance. In this vein I have two huge bags of bark waiting in the drive, waiting for me to summon up the energy to begin to lay it on the larger beds. Today is calmer, drier, brighter. I think a walk is on the cards this morning before Martin Junior attempts to connect with me this afternoon. We've been invited out to tea, so I hope the two things don't coincide. I love cake.

Ups and Downs

So much has happened without my having time to record it that I've probably forgotten it all by now. Sigh. It's been a week of hectic activity, encouraged, nay engendered by the visit of a daughter. First a big shop at Waitrose seconds after she got off the train, for goodies and treats and yummy things. We did get a bit regressive in our joy at hot weather, exciting plans and freedom. After lunch we took off for a blind walk, heading out through Joan and John's garden and thence over the hills and far away. We invented new footpaths, skirted some farm cottage gardens, and ducked into the local big house grounds to escape the Beware of the Bull signs. Every few minutes we had to stop and admire the view, repeating the endless mantras of how lovely Suffolk is, how unexpectedly hilly, how amazingly fortunate that I ended up in such an idyllic place. Back up through the garden footpath, hot and tired but happy, we found Joan working on a bed. "Oh," she gasped, looking at me with a beaming smile. "You're alright. We've been worried about you all this time as we haven't seen you. In the end John was so concerned that we asked your neighbour. He'll be so happy when I tell him Denise is well." She's such a darling, an octogenarian like her husband though she claims she can't be bothered to work out exactly how old they are.

Next day we took the well-used track to Marlesford Antiques where we each found something we had to have. My treasure was a shuttered mirror for the garden, a device intended to trick the eye into thinking it's a mysterious opening but which the shutters subvert. Olivia's was a beautiful Hawthornden jug asking to be filled with  flowers. On to Aldeburgh then where a cashmere sweater with her name on had to be acquired, thanks to a recent payment of royalties. It was a satisfying morning's shopping. We basked in the garden's sunshine all afternoon, ending the day with nutmeg and lemon roast chicken with a sherry gravy. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm just doesn't do it justice.

On Wednesday we'd arranged to take a Canadian canoe out on the River Alde. We imagined pootling about, pithering in and out of creeks while the sky stretched clear and blue over us, but no! it was much more ordered than that. There is a very narrow channel along its winding, curling length, and though high tide showed water everywhere like a small inland ocean, we had to stick to the marked route for fear of ending up on a sandbank. And so we paddled steadily, nervously trying to work out which post followed the last as we wove our way to Snape. Olivia steered our journey by twisting her paddle one way or the other, an arduous enough job without my shouted instructions of "Left! LEFT! LEEEEFFTT!!!" when we seemed to be drifting off route. But we made it there and looked forward to drifting back on the tide, our reward for effort. But it wasn't to be. A breeze got up, pushing against us, so the return journey was harder than the outgoing one. Back on dry land the car keys were nowhere to be found. Suddenly I remembered my earlier comfort break in the bushes, and as Olivia ran ahead to see if I'd left them in the car, I crawled through the grass to find them where I'd put them down two hours earlier. Why? How? Don't ask. I have no answers.

Rain brought very low temperatures on Thursday, and so began the worst of days. The Rayburn has broken down again, and I found the note I left telling the engineer I was just down the road and would be back in minutes if he rang me was in my handbag. How? Why? Yeah. So I missed him, and he may or may not return tomorrow. But that was one crisis of many, and I hope the sun shines tomorrow and we can begin again. Goodnight.

In Charge

I put my boots on ready to set off for a walk when I suddenly remembered there was a pre-performance talk at Snape and I had to be there an hour early. Boots were thrown off, pasta was hurriedly put on the stove, and I raced upstairs to don my black togs which luckily were ready ready for me. Back downstairs I flung some pesto into the pasta, chucked in several handfuls of spinach, dollopped the lot into a tupperware dish, grabbed a fork and hared off to Snape. I needn't have worried too much: the opera, specially commissioned by Aldeburgh Music, Opera North and the Royal Opera, was being performed in one of the studios, and the talk was in another one, all quite low key. The usher briefing was nearly non-existent, and so I found myself alone in charge of the audience as my co-usher didn't arrive until the talk started. It was wonderful! I loved it!

Another usher, I'll call him Harry, was there on a freebie ticket, and boy did he chat me up, all five feet of him. He's an awfully nice man, and we had discussed H Is For Hawk at some length during the first aid course on Tuesday (he and his reading group hated it!). I sent him off to find some programmes, and he returned with them like a puppy, looking up at me with puppy eyes, practically panting. When he told me I looked lovely in my black clothes, and he'd save a seat for me next to him, I smiled and moved on to deal with punters. You 'avin' a larf 'Arry?

While I ate my supper in my car a man emerged from one of the recital rooms and stood in front of me talking on his phone. As I munched he put his finger in his nose, pulled out a bogey, studied it and then scrunched it up deliberately and threw it away. Pig! I wanted to open the window and shout, Oy, mate, you must be foreign. We don't do that sort of thing here. But who did he turn out to be? Only the star of the opera, English to his back teeth! I could hardly look at him.

Bloody Mary

What's in a name? Well, everything, since you ask. Anyone who is lucky enough to be called by the monicker on their birth certificate would probably consider the question to be trivial. It's not to me. And that's because I was christened Mary Denise, but called Denise. Why? Because the Irish priest who conducted the service balked at the heathen Denise - "sure there's no Saint Denise. You can't call a Catholic child that!" - and stuffed the name of the holiest woman ever born in front of it. But there is a Saint Denise, ignorant man. A quick glance at Wikipedia would have told him that. I was martyred in the 3rd century along with Sts Peter, Paul and Andrew, and in 5th-century Africa I met a grisly end with Dativa, Leonitia, Tertius, Emilianus, Boniface, Majoricus and Servus. Take your pick. And then there's Dionysia, the Greek goddess of the grape harvest, wine-making and wine. Perhaps that was the connection that Father Flipping Fanning didn't like. And thanks to him I've endured, nay suffered, a lifetime of confusion and difficulty over my identity.

Anyway, this issue has come up again as I go to vote. I don't bring my voting card with me because you don't need it. What's your address, they ask. I tell them. And your name? Denise Laing. There's no one of that name shown, they tell me, and look at me doubtfully. Oh right, I say, that's me though. My name is Mary Denise Laing, or to be more precise Mary Denise Frances Ping-Pong Nellie the Elephant Laing, but that wouldn't all fit on the electoral register, would it. Again they look at me curiously and exchange worried looks with each other. But I'm in a bad mood and not prepared to be patient. I've walked down to the old village school in the sunshine and half way there it has turned to heavy rain with no warning. I'm not wearing a coat. It's half a mile. I washed my hair not three hours ago. I'm bedraggled and cold, and I have half a mile to walk back. I glare at them, and then I suddenly see the funny side and smile, very broadly. They look relieved and smile too, and I'm given my voting slip. And as I single-handedly turn blue Suffolk green I march out into the rain and walk home again.

The Tempest

God, it's wild out there. I seized an opportunity to dash out and mow my narrow grass verge just as another squally rain shower decided to hover overhead, but I got away fairly unscathed. I was nearly blown over putting the small Flymo back in the garage, and this is only the beginning: gales are forecast for later. I've put the car away too, and I'm not budging until it's all over. So glad there are no huge trees near me or my house. I HATE very windy weather. It's so intimidating. I've brought in my as yet unplanted sweet pea babies and three potted lobelias which I could see ending up in the field behind. The good news is that Nigel's rhubarb have survived, and are poking up out of the earth provocatively.

I've taken a picture of the garden after its mowing yesterday, and a selfie of me, dishevelled after my mad dash earlier. The lawn doesn't look too bad - no comment about the state of me. Now I've put the car away I fancy some chocolate. There's no pleasing some people.

Newly-cropped lawn

Dishevelled, and a little mad looking

Facing Facts

I came to this house 15 months ago determined to reduce my material presence, but of course the opposite has happened. Over the weekend I compounded my acquisitiveness by buying a pretty, lightly distressed settle for the RWNN, and a charming Victorian-style wrought iron table and chairs for the garden. Come to think of it the garden set is mildly distressed too, but in a more natural, worn way, as if the estate smithy had been ordered to knock something up over his brazier and accidentally left it near a horse which rubbed up against it repeatedly for several days. Anyway, I can tick two more boxes on my "must have" list, all the time wishing I didn't have to have one at all.

Settle, colour to be decided

 

 

 

Tricia modelling Cousin Margaret's beautiful handiwork

 After a hectic bank holiday planting shrubs and ground cover and perennials, I came home from a day's first aid course at Snape Maltings to mow the lawn. First there was the wind to contend with, a brutal south-westerly which swept across the garden forcing every unsecured object in its path along with it, including me. Then there was the slope in the lawn which, to an inexperienced eye might look slight but is NOT insignificant when you're pushing a lawnmower heavy with grass cuttings. I was folded almost double across the mower as I came to the top of the hill, and had to sit down after each pair of stripes. This is not what I planned when I bought a powerful electric mower, and I now think I will either have to replace it with a petrol model or the services of a human grass cutter. Lawn mowing doesn't half make me feel my age.

Tomorrow 50 mph winds are forecast, more than double today's. What with the expected heavy rain to add to the misery, I shall take advantage of the appalling conditions outside to revise Italian, do my mountain of ironing - appropriate cliche that given the Scafell Pike leering out of my laundry  basket. Should this heap fall on any of my visitors, or should I encounter any unfortunate victims of the heavy winds, I can now do CPR and mouth-to-mouth (using a shield, natch), operate a defib machine, do a Heimlich manoeuvre (now renamed an abdominal thrust), deal with an epileptic fit, a faint, a diabetic hypo- or hyper-glycaemic episode, a bout of hysteria, a broken limb and a sprained ankle. Doing any of the above in a full concert hall is likely to be very challenging, but having practised with seven colleagues today, we decided that as long as we are all on duty together we'll be fine.