I feel like my garden – withered and dry, crinkled and brown around the edges. I was in the city this week and noticed it more when in nicer clothes than in the worn, old coastal rags. Maybe the state of the clothes and the dessication go together. Time for a bit of sandpaper, I think, and a bone-deep moisturise and so I purchase a glove and refill the skin cream jars as though it will make a difference.
Today was fine, yesterday was fine, tomorrow will be fine. It’s the way of our weather despite that there have been a couple of blissfully chilled nights that almost felt like autumn. It gave one hope. Hope for cooler weather, hope for weather changes, hope for rain.
The cottage’s garden just manages to survive the Dry with deep watering.
I talk to it a lot – hang in there, you’re doing so well, don’t worry, the rain’s coming. We can be forgiven for thinking that autumn is here (3 weeks or more early) because the trees are casting their foliage down, showers of leaves that are brown, not the fine wine colours expected of autumn. A stress reaction – poor things. Black cockatoos visit every day and cackle and caw in the liquid ambers – I’ve never seen them in domestic gardens – only in the bush and pine forests where they masticate bottlebrush and pinecone.
Do they spy the sunflowers and mark them for seeds in a few weeks. Or perhaps the word has got around that the green parrots have found a supply of nuts in our birdfeeder. All the wildlife is hungry…
The farm now looks like ells (an ell is just over a yard or a metre – I’m living in the 12th century just now) of gold cut-velvet. In truth, that’s being kind – it’s dusty and dirty. There’s still pick left to graze but it’s getting very low. Even so, we’re luckier than many as the diamond-glitter arc of irrigation water passes across the perennial lucerne so that the green becomes rich and dark – heaven for sheep.
I’d like to cast off my damaged bits like the trees, to re-sprout something supple and vibrant next spring. But my body is like a line of falling dominos - one part crunches, then in quick succession, rips and tears, followed by further crackles – a percussive symphony. It’s possible to hear me moving through the house. I had iontophoresis this week, two of four sessions. Whilst I’d prefer to think I was in the golden autumn of life, such treatments speak more clearly of winter and I hear the words … ‘the winter of our discontent’ from Shakespeare’s Richard III (a beautifully voiced performance from David Morrissey)
But this is life, is it not? Good days, bad days? So perhaps less of the discontent…
We watched Alan Carr’s Adventure’s with Agatha on Britbox. A light-hearted examination of the great crime-writer’s life through the lens of comedian Carr who is a lifelong Christie fan. We learned about Christie – that she is the most prolific female playwright of all time – over 20 published plays. That she wrote 66 novels and 14 short story collections. I’ve read none of them.
We were of course devoted to the Miss Marple and Poirot TV series and watched all the iterations of Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express. My favourite Poirot is Suchet, utterly. But close behind is Ustinov and let’s not dismiss Branagh – he was mostly faithful to the archtype, but put his own spin upon it and why not?
So I intend to immerse myself in Christie’s novels for awhile and with distances to drive this week, purchased an audio of A Murder is Announced, narrated by Emilia Fox. She has the most perfect voice but then how can a member of the Fox family not have a perfect voice?
On Kindle? The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain. It’s so elegantly French. There is definitely a French style because to read this book is like watching a nuanced Continental movie with a thread that one can follow. None of that faux existentialism.
We have only one episode of Endeavour to watch – such polished entertainment. Shall we move on to Morse to see how they mesh? I don’t know. We do crave another long- running series in Endeavour’s place.
My friend and I sat on the beach in 30 degrees this week, and sundry other days of slightly less heat. Just us and a happily married pair of pied oyster catchers who pipped at us as they walked past, reminding us that the beach was theirs, not ours. Afterward, with a salt crust all over, and having swum in a long-sleeved rashie and a sunhat, I thought about the season as it stands in its hot glory, and about my attitude.
Perhaps I’m not in the ‘winter of discontent’ after all. Perhaps I’m in the autumn of hope and in the words of Luisa from Writing Around the Edges,
“Hold it lightly.
Hold it lightly.
hold it lightly.”
Music for this week? Lounge-lizard cool, in honour of happy avian marriages, of less discontent and of lost and found music tracks because I found it, the lost piece of music I love. It was on an old, unmarked CD and thanks to the Shazam app, I was able to identify it to present today:
Maybe it's Kate's choice. She must have SOME privacy. I respect that.
The same as Charles hasn't indicated what sort of cancer he has. Just that he has another cancer found when he had prostate cancer. As wife of someone who has had cancer and mother to another who has had personal operations, it's not really anyone else's business. Just my opinion...
Here in the U.S., when summer's intensity has sucked away all of my reserves, I like to think of those sporadic days of respite, when the humidity lifts and the temperatures drop, as nature's way of telling me to "hold on, hold on, you can do this, just hold on!" I hope all your plant and animal friends make it through! Surely they are buoyed by your conversations and cheerleading!
I'm so relieved for you to have found your missing song. It is a stunning piece, one I can't recall hearing before. What struck me most, though, was the comments. So many others who say they spent years searching. Apparently, you are in good company, Prue! I do hope you find your way back to the hope of a new season, whatever comes.