Day 205: Burn or Walk?

Sometimes a day comes along where you feel strongly that you are in the wrong place.  Today I also have that itchy feeling that I have experienced ever time I am about to burn my boats and bridges, and walk.  This is how it starts - the itchiness.  Which builds and builds until the final moment comes, which is like stepping off a cliff and free-falling.  When I know I'm going to jump, and there is NOTHING I can do, because some other part of me is in control. 

I've experienced this about eight times in my life.  It's exhilarating, and the outcome is invariably necessary, but I recognise that although there's part of me that likes throwing all the cards up in the air, it's foolhardy.  I could just choose to take a different path before pushing things to the cliff-edge.  Walk away, but keep access to the boats and the bridges.  In the knowledge that I may never have to use them again, but I could if I needed. 

This is what I choose to take from today.  Watch this space.  Will I burn or have I evolved enough to walk away?

Day 204: Within Tent

The Ark

A visit to the camping shop to buy a tent for next weekend.  I like tents.  And I like camping shops - all the gadgets and the promise of freedom and being outside.  When the weather is good, there is nothing better than living feral for a few days.  Today in the blazing sunshine, it is hard to imagine weather not being good - but I have been to enough trench-foot Glastonburys to know better...

So it's with this in mind that I buy a Vango Ark.  Because if it's an ark, it'll float, right?  

Incidentally, the Vango claims that it will fit 'three men'.  I find this hard to believe.  But I must not forget that Noah apparently managed to fit two of everything in his ark.  So perhaps all arks are just far stretchier than they look.

Let it rain.  I've got flotation and expansion capabilities.    

Day 203: Lawn and Ball

Deliberate

Finally the encroaching garden becomes too apparent.  Dandelion clocks by the dozen.  Tangled forget-me-nots.  Knee high grass.  The brick-encircled round lawn is invisible and the Ball Bush (as it is known) has rejected its identity, sprouting wild dreadlocks. 

To my shame, it takes less than two hours to make a significant difference.  Aggressive strimming reveals lawn; assertive trimming reveals Ball.  Grass edged; bricks exposed.  Against a few clearly defined critical elements, the contrasting overgrown borders suddenly seem deliberate and artful.  Yes, I am Gertrude Jekyll/Vita Sackville-West, and yes, this is 'drift' planting.  As I poke around, I find lost herbs.  Marjoram, oregano, mint, thyme, rosemary, sage, chives (I am now Jamie Oliver).  Tony from next door sticks his head over the fence to ask how I keep my acer flourishing (I morph into Alan Titchmarsh).  I am tempted to say 'mulch and crooning' but admit that it's luck and survival-of-the-fittest.  No space for the needy.  Not in this garden. 

Maximum satisfaction for minimal effort.  Lawn and Ball.  That's all that's needed.  Everything else can look after itself. 

(NB - this picture is someone else's Lawn/Ball combo.  Mine is more structural-yet-relaxed.)

Day 202: Leaving Canary

Every time I go to Canary Wharf I am delighted to leave.  Too much steel, and glass and self-importance. 

That's all I have to say.

Day 201: Big Fish

There are surprisingly big fish in the local lake.  Never spotted them before, but today there they are - dark shadows and swirling tails.  I am reliably informed that they are carp - not ornamental koi, but just the standard ones.

So there you go.  Big fish in a proportionally big pond.  Nothing to get self-important about. 

I have just discovered that there is a variety called the bighead carp.  Not in this pond.  No, sir.

Day 200: Bust of Chicken

Julius Caesar's bust

Two hundred posts.  In other news, I am doing something very grown-up.  I am poaching two chicken breasts (plural).  A chicken bust (singular).  Or a chicken bosom (singular).  Not chicken bosoms (plural). 

I was very fond of the word 'bosoms' as an eight-year old.  My mother wasn't. 

'No - bosom is SINGULAR.  My BOSOM.'  At this she would place her hand on her breast bone to demonstrate, as I would weep with laughter.  (A mono-bosom!) 

I think Mum would have preferred it if I'd said tits - at least that would have been accurate. 

Anyway, I am now a grown-up so I can poach whatever I want. 

Two chicken bosoms. 

Day 199: City Slacker

A properly hot day.  Cannon Street.  Sun is glaring off the pavements and glass, and the air is thick with dust and fumes and the smell of river mud.  I am overdressed.

Weather like this has been so long in coming that it's sensory overload. I'm bombarded by snapshot memories of other summers.

Lolling around on the playing fields at school, in pre-exam hysteria, throwing grass cuttings at each other. Pints of cold cider and packets of crisps at riverside pubs. Cherry-picking season on the farm, swaying high up in the trees on tall ladders. Then strawberries. Everything stained red, and wasps stupid on sugar.

Holidays.  Greek islands. Bongling goat bells, the lazy slap of flipflops, and the buzz of a moped. Oregano and figs and salty skin. 

As soon as I get home, I head for the Abbey Orchard.  Shoes and socks off, lying under a tree, lost in the bright green canopy of leaves swaying above me.  I'm not on holiday.  But it'll do for today.