It’s a bit humbling, blogging. When people are friendly and interested enough to leave a comment, you find out that they are nicer and kinder people than you are. Apart from the weird ones, that is. Not long ago, a comment was left pointing out that paying a lot of money for a damaged piece of china was a bit pointless really. And so it is, unless you love the china in question and see why a person is that enthusiastic (more on a related subject sometime, I’m trying not to digress).

And a virtual friend in India said ‘wow’ when I mentioned, almost in passing, being a church warden. I think of it as a voluntary job, done wholeheartedly but entered into reluctantly as it involves work and responsibility I’d sooner not have taken on. But thank you for ‘wow’ howdoweknow, it has encouraged me to remember that I should appreciate the responsibility and not think about how quickly I can find another person to take over from me.

Another comment is one of mine in another blog. About flirting. Yes, now I’m in my 50s I reckon it’s okay to give in to the enjoyment – kept strictly within flirting not attempted seduction (eek!) bounds of course – while I’m obviously not worryingly up for it, past it but not embarrassingly so, and safe. And married men of my own age are entertained by it too, the unmarried ones are looking at and for women far younger, and young men, no I don’t go there, except, teasingly, in a comment box – and I received the reply that I was a tinker.

And I was. It’s all about the language of written kisses, that is, ‘x’s. I said (it was relevant) that it’s x x x that you need to look out for – and it is, it’s high-level flirtation. It is, of course, quite different from xxx from a friend, which is friendly; affectionate but like a warm hug. But I signed this comment
xx z
and that was certainly the action of a rascal. Or a tinker. Though not a femme fatale.

We did, admittedly make a mistake. But we hatched a plan to get round it without anyone actually having to admit that. We very much doubted if more than a handful of people would even notice the error, in black and white though it is.

And we’d have got away with it too, if it hadn’t been for that pesky Treasurer.

The Secretary and the Chairman (S & Z) politely vie with each other to take responsibility….she was forgetful and later unobservant; I was careless and unobservant. But it was Mr T’s fault really, because he gave the paper to the secretary to give to the chairman and then told the chairman that she already had it. So she had 400 copies made of the wrong piece of paper.

I will have 400 copies made of the right piece of paper and a covering letter and we will spend a couple of hours on Monday stuffing envelopes.

Having worked hard this morning, though feeling somewhat dispirited by the end of it, I was pleased to remember the Emergency Russians* I bought in only two days ago. So I cheered myself (and husband) with smoked salmon and melon for lunch.

Last night I arrived home from the service where the Archdeacon made me officially a churchwarden. It has to be done properly as it is a post with legal status, so we all have to Affirm various things, like being faithful and um, diligent or something (in relationship to churchwardenship, no obligation placed as to ones behaviour in other walks of life).

I had left food for Sage and Ro. Leftovers, which was convenient for all. I arrived back to find that they had saved me some, which I hadn’t expected but was glad to have. “Would you like some of that soup too, I heated some up and it was nice” enquired the Sage. I was startled. I had assumed it had all been eaten some time ago. I sniffed cautiously and took it outside to the compost heap. I didn’t like to tell my beloved how old it actually was, but it had been there over a fortnight, I haven’t made soup for a while. It had had something put in front of it in the fridge and been lost to view. It smelled funny, not actually bad but frankly not good either.
I expected us to have a broken night’s sleep and for him to be cancelling all engagements today. But no, he’s fine. Quite all right. I’m astonished and relieved.

Like many people, I’m a bit casual about sell-by dates. I assume they give a few days in hand, and when you find use-bys on things like Marmite, which keep forever, it rather undermines their credibility. Not having a cat, who is the best judge of food freshness (dogs are useless, they like stinky food), I sniff, taste and err on the cautious side.
I am rigorous about food hygiene, however, and always wash my hands after touching raw meat or fish, never mixing hot food or cold unless it’s going to be cooked or eaten at once, being careful about knives and chopping boards – all the things that can spread nasties without you being able to detect them. But mould on cheese or jam? Pff – not for the baby, but how do you build up your immune system unless you test it a bit?

*Emergency Russians = Emergency Rations, as I’m sure you realise. Family saying. I’ve mentioned it before, ‘search this blog’ at the top if you want to see that in context, though I’m afraid I didn’t explain it, or any other family expression, there.

Apparently, this year, herbs are in fashion. And vegetables are out. If you want your garden to be Where It’s At, according to this year’s Chelsea Flower Show entrants.

I can see why veggies are not for the undedicated gardener, in the long-term. A few years ago, a decorative parterre was all the rage. And you were advised to put veggies in the flowerbeds. You saw photos in the glossies of cabbages among the roses and carrots in the petunias. And, if the right vegetables are chosen, this can work if they are the cut-and-come-again type, like courgettes and beans. But take a lettuce or a cauliflower out and you are left with a big gap in your border.

My mother tried dotting asparagus around, because she had nowhere for a dedicated bed. But she forgot (because you couldn’t see them) where they were, until the spears had grown too big to cut anyway. The ferny leaves looked pretty, which was the eventual intention; but in the end asparagus beetles found them. I remove these annoying, but not unattractive beetles every day and kill them, because their repellently sluggy little offspring eat the leaves and the stalks die off. I don’t usually kill anything as my garden is full of hedgehogs, frogs, ladybirds and birds and they deal with most bugs, but they don’t like the flavour of gooseberry sawfly or asparagus beetle.

Oh no, I’ve digressed. Sorry. I’ve been given a bar of fabulous-looking chocolate (‘extra fine dark chocolate with a fruity touch of lemon and spices) and I am using all my willpower not to eat it yet, and none is left to force me to keep to the point.

So. Gaps in the flowerbeds. So you have to have a little bed or a series of pots of half-grown lettuces etc. to fill in the spaces when you want to eat anything. I sometimes do it the other way round, however, and plant a few flowers in the kitchen garden: there’s the companion planting theory, that some plants grow well together, there’s the hope that strong-smelling plants like marigolds keep away aphids and scented flowers particularly attract bees and pollinating insects. And they are pretty which is enough justification for anyone.

But horticultural fashionistas will soon find that a herb garden is not that easy an option either. It is not hard to grow herbs for use in the kitchen. But you can’t set out an elaborate bed, with each type in its own little section, and expect them all to stay there. A few, like rosemary and sage, grow large, whether as a bush or a clump. Some, like French tarragon (never bother to grow the Russian sort) hardly grow at all. And mint, given half a chance, will send out its underground runners and take over the garden, never mind the bed. Then there are the annuals. Herbs such as basil are tender and need to be started off indoors. But the annuals (basil, chervil, coriander etc) run quickly to seed, so you have to keep sowing more for succession.

It’s a great pleasure to use herbs you have grown and have nipped out to pick as you need them, and they are easy to grow. But if, as they will at Chelsea, you try making a feature of a whole range of them, it will not be as trouble-free as it looks. You could, of course, simply put a variety of different thymes in the driest and stoniest part of the garden where nothing else will grow. They will look and smell lovely and be no effort at all.

So, I didn’t do that link yesterday, nor check specific facts. Sorry, but if it really gets to you, you are more than welcome to tell me so and spur me into action. If not, I’ll remain complacently sure that a. no one has read it (apart from Benedict) or b. you have keenly looked up the information yourself.

You know how it is, when a small mistake or omission causes, not only extra work for yourself, but makes you feel foolish too? Mm, well, I forgot to sign a letter before taking it to have 400 copies made. So I spent an hour (ish, I wasn’t counting) signing them individually. Fortunately, I had the company of two friends who were folding papers and putting them into envelopes and so, once they had stopped laughing at me, we chatted animatedly and amicably.

Last Friday, greengrocer son Al added another string to his bow. The next village, which is the best place in the world to live if you want friends, has set up a Friday evening market. It is a place that is small in population and wide-ranging in area, which has lost, over the years, its school, pub and shop (all of them gone at least 15 years) but still has a fabulous community spirit, due to the work put in by the people who live there. They are not at all insular, newcomers or non-inhabitants are as welcome as those who have always lived there, and they have a Friday evening social club at the village hall, which has a bar and people licensed to run it.

So, on Friday evening, Dilly went to the shop, with the baby, while Al did his deliveries. He then went back, loaded his van, shut the shop and drove to the next-village hall. As it was a fine evening, they held the market outside, which had the advantage that he didn’t need to unload, and everyone enjoyed their shopping, with plants, cakes, excellent meat from the village farm shop and Al’s fruit & veg. And the bar, and a free barbecue to celebrate the occasion.

Al enjoyed it very much, and financially it was well worth while. But, by the time he had returned to the shop, unloaded, phoned in his order for the next day and returned home, he had put in a 14-hour day, with the busiest day of the week to follow in a few hours. He has committed himself to a month’s trial, but in how many places can you burn a candle before it starts to disintegrate? He already works over 50 hours every week at the shop, without taking paperwork or free home deliveries into account.

And, when English strawberries ripen next month, his busiest season of the year will start. He loves his job, isn’t that fortunate.

But here, not a cloud in the sky.

Just a lilac hedge and apple blossom.

I’ve been hearing about the Cloud Appreciation Society recently and, having read an article in today’s paper about it, have looked up the website, http://www.cloudappreciationsociety.org/(do excuse me putting a proper link, I might get around to it later), and I look forward to a spare half hour to browse through the Clouds That Look Like Things and the Cloud of the Month. Apparently cloudspotters prefer to be called nephologists or, more informally, nimbomaniacs, both of which are just asking to be misunderstood, a fact that I’m sure is not lost on the members of the society, which does not seem to take itself too seriously. The founder, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, says that clouds are the most “egalitarian of all of nature’s works” which invites the response “Huh?” Isn’t all weather pretty egalitarian?” A view only partially refuted by ‘the rain, it raineth on the just and also on the unjust fella, but more on just than unjust for the unjust hath the just’s umbrella.’

British people love British weather. It’s always good for a grumble. There was a lot of comment, a few years ago, on the fact that Inuits or Icelanders (sorry again about the lack of research, it’s Sunday and I’ve relaxed) have a surprisingly large numbers of words for snow. We have far more than that (whatever it is) for rain. Any Brit knows exactly what is meant by drizzle, pouring, cloudburst, showery, teeming, pelting. We have figures of speech: raining cats and dogs, pissing down, bucketing down (a subtle difference between them), fine weather for ducks. Nowadays, it doesn’t rain enough, on the whole. So, when the sun has shone for more than a day or two, we can say, gloomily, “well, the farmers need the rain” or “this’ll end in a thunderstorm, mark my words.”

We love sunshine on holiday. But hot weather, when we have to work, soon makes us ratty. We long for an end to a hot spell, although we want the sun to shine at weekends. We really want rain every night and sun every day, but with a pleasantly refreshing breeze, because we call anything over 21 degrees celsius ‘unbearably hot.’ British weather can be lovely, but it is unpredictable, especially on holiday weekends. We have fewer Bank Holidays than any other country in Europe, and several of them are strangely grouped within a few weeks. Between Easter, which can be any time between late March and late April, but is usually within the middle fortnight of April, and the end of May, there are four Bank Holidays. Since this is also the time schools are trying hard to cram the last nuggets of knowledge into exam-takers heads, they really want all the time they can get, but hey, I like the Spring and enjoy those leisurely Sundays, knowing that Monday will also be a day to relax.

LATER —- And another thing, we are bilingual in temperature. Cold weather is referred to in Celsius – minus 4 last night, brrr. Hot weather is Farenheit – ‘England’s Sizzling in the Seventies!’ proclaim the hopeful headlines.

I see that the teenage violinist Nicola Benedetti has just released her second CD, of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, plus some Mozart and Schubert. She won the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition in 2004 and I went to hear her at Snape Maltings last year. And she was well worth hearing, she has a fine talent and I was impressed by her interpretation of the music.

She was also more than worth seeing. She wore a peach-coloured, clinging, full length gown, which was not revealing of flesh but showed her figure to its maximum advantage. And, slenderly voluptuous, this was indeed shown when she turned to the orchestra to check the tuning of the instruments. She is a mobile violinist and we could only speculate on the impression the view of her wriggling bottom was making on the male violinist who sat immediately behind her. I went to the concert by myself, but I say ‘we’ because, during the interval, I heard several people comment on this aspect of her appearance, including staid-looking elderly women, all of whom were vastly impressed. I spent my time wondering whether or not she was wearing knickers and, if so, whether it was such a minuscule thong that no line of it was visible, or whether it was a body stocking that had no lines to show. I never did decide.

I’m finally about to book for this August’s series of concerts. I’m thinking that I will go to the sort of performances that I might otherwise never see, such as the Tibetan Monks of Tashi Lhunpo, as well as the orchestral music and jazz which I know I’ll enjoy.

But less eye candy. Humphrey Lyttelton, perhaps?

I’ve just finished reading ‘Never let me go’ by Kazuo Ishiguru. It was shortlisted for the Booker prize last year but I didn’t read it then and I can’t remember how it was received by the critics; of course there are quotes at the front of the paperback of favourable ones. It isn’t a book to like, the subject matter is too creepy for that (and is gradually unveiled, so it would be unfair of me to explain further) but, even in ‘The Unconsoled’, which I can’t remember making head nor tail of, he never writes anything but well.

It’s written in the voice of Kathy, a 31-year-old woman, and set in the late 1990s; it becomes apparent that it is placed in an ‘alternate’ 1990s and that it is, in fact, science fiction. Since it is written by a woman with a limited viewpoint and one sees nothing except through her eyes, it is impossible to criticise the viewpoint he chooses to show us. The quoted Evening Standard review says, at the end “It is peculiarly pure fiction in this way, abstract, uncluttered by reference, claiming no great knowledge other than that of the heart” – which ending sounds a bit schmaltzy but isn’t, it’s true in a distorted way. It is the oddest book I’ve read for a while, but worth having read.

I’ve been finding it hard to finish books recently. I always have more than one on the go, partly so that, wherever I am in the house, I don’t need to be without a book. But I haven’t had time to read for long stretches at a time, and I haven’t been so stressed that reading has been vital – books are my security blanket; I can be calmed by their presence and soothed by rereading an old favourite. When, as they say, the going gets tough, I up my speed and my eyes flick across the pages, devouring words greedily – which is to be recommended as an alternative to quantities of chocolate or ice cream. Anyway, I’ve been mildly anxious about busy-ness, which has affected my concentration, whilst not actually being worried or unhappy about it, so I’ve been reading a little, but superficially.

Books and candles mark my subliminal moods. If I want to know how I really feel, I think how many lit candles surround my night-time bath, and how and what I am reading. I think that’s a bit pathetic, but who am I to judge?

Headlines in today’s Eastern Daily Press

‘Eco-firm to face pollution charges’ – embarrassing.

‘Outrage over the export of gallows’ – a Suffolk farmer has been selling execution equipment to African countries.

‘Hoodie heroes commended’ – astonishment to find that lads had helped a man who had collapsed. The ambulanceman assumed they were mugging him until he realised they were using their hoodies to keep him warm. Hope he’s ashamed.

And my favourite –
‘Axeman tries to chop his way into Norwich prison’

I was chatting to a friend (on MSN, one only has time for virtual friends nowadays) about workload. I said that I’d had a spate of meetings and had a bad build-up of follow-up work from them. He agreed gloomily. The trouble is, he said, that when your workload is being planned, they allow for the meetings but not for the preparation or the follow-up.

You will notice, pedantically, that I didn’t put in quotation marks there, even though I wrote ‘I said’ (single q mark: doesn’t count). You will then have realised that is because he didn’t say it, he wrote it. But if I had put ‘he wrote’ it would have looked just a touch fussy, wouldn’t it.

Anyway, after this morning’s meeting I have, not only an alarming amount of work to do but a week’s tighter deadline than I had appreciated.

Otherwise, all is sunny and cheerful, literally and figuratively. It’s a gorgeous day, cloudless sky, warm but with a fresh breeze so that it doesn’t seem airless. My friend Ab is on holiday this week, out of the country. I hope he’s having a delightful time but I’ll remind him next year, May is the best time to be in England. Still spring but feels like summer, the lilac is in flower and, best of all, asparagus is on the menu.

And my house is clean and there are enough leftovers for me not to have to cook tomorrow. For a melancholy and pessimistic person (for then I am rarely disappointed), I feel quite chipper.

And I’ve just noticed this is my hundredth post. Woo-hoo. Who’d have thought it. It took me rather more than 100 days to get here, but we’re all allowed a day off now and again.

Mrs Tittlemouse,” said the smiling Mr Jackson (The Tale of Mrs Tittlemouse, Beatrix Potter).

I have been just like Mrs Tittlemouse today. She was a most terribly tidy particular little mouse, always sweeping and dusting. After a event involving Mr Jackson the toad and a nest of bumblebees, she was obliged to spring clean. She swept, and scrubbed, and dusted; and she rubbed up the furniture with beeswax, and polished her little tin spoons.

Then she had a party. Good on you, Mrs Tittlemouse, that’s what I shall do.

Squiffany came to call. ‘Hello’ I said joyfully. Tilly came rushing through. We had a visitor and she hadn’t heard. Bark, bark bark. Ah, it’s family, sorry, I’ll go back to eating dinner, was Tilly’s demeanour.

“Uh” went an amused baby, “Uh, uh, uh” – “what did Tilly say?” I asked. “Uh, uh, uh” said Squiffany, laughing.

Try it, it sounds more like a dog’s bark than ‘woof’ any day.