Distraction therapy

Well, I’m glad that week is over. Some of you will know that my husband A had a heart attack in January. He has been recovering well until he had another one the weekend before last. He is now out of hospital again and we are pottering about, but it does kind of make you wonder if this is how it’s going to be – waiting for the Big One. I’m hoping that, as before, as time goes on it moves further and further into the back of one’s mind but it’s a bit of a sword of Damocles experience. Anyway, enough of that. It’s the reason I couldn’t manage a blog last weekend, but here I am again, like the proverbial bad penny.

In the garden the new border is really coming into its own. It’s all growing together quite beautifully and I’m really pleased with it. The Sceptr’d Isle rose has suffered a little in the rain, the flowers have ‘balled’ slightly but they look okay, and they should be cup-shaped anyway, so it’s getting away with it. Desdemona (white) is out and beautifully fragrant and I’m going to buy lots more and fill the rest of the garden with her. There are a couple of spaces to fill and I shall probably dot in hardy geraniums, Dreamland is a pale pink and doesn’t get too tall. That rather intrusive lupin is my husband’s contribution. It’s not that I’m thinking ‘come on, you slu-ugs’ or anything, but, you know…

There are other parts of the garden I am also pleased with as old friends begin to appear. I always love to see the allium siculum come up every year. I think they’re called something different now (nectaroscordum is in there somewhere), but they are such a delight with their heads of drooping bells that the bees just love. And I’ve some old small-headed osteospermum that are bright and garish, but I just can’t get rid of them, they’re so cheerful, and these white daisies just keep coming back too. Later on there will be the mauve of the erigeron glauca or sea asters. Perfect in a coastal garden. Nothing too tall or the wind plays havoc with it. I let the aquilegias self-seed where they want and those waving red-tipped stalks are geum Scarlet Tempest—always reliable and has a good thicket of foliage, not like some that are a bit sparse in the leaf department (I’m looking at you, Totally Tangerine).

Concentrating enough to read has been quite difficult, but I did manage to finish the last in Monica Dickens’ Chronicles of a Working Life trilogy, My Turn To Make The Tea. This covers her time as a junior journalist on a provincial newspaper and is as full of amusing anecdotes as the previous two. I didn’t enjoy it so much as the first two, but that’s probably my state of mind and no reflection on Monica. A little easier to get into was a favourite nature author of mine, John Lewis-Stempel, and his latest short book, Night Life. It builds on his earlier book, Night Walking (one of my favourite nature books), but he travels a little further afield from his Herefordshire farmland, visiting Wales, the Thames Valley and the Lake District. He shows us hares boxing in the moonlight, nightjars catching moths, but my favourite is his description of a shimmering barley field silver-lit by starlight. I have to say that I prefer his earlier nature writing (Meadowland, The Running Hare) but Night Life was engaging enough to help me stop fretting before going to sleep at night. So few of us have access to spaces without light pollution, sometimes reading about it is the best we can do.

Distraction whilst A was hospitalised also came by way of the television. Have any of you watched/streamed ‘This is Not a Murder Mystery’ on U and Drama? I totally loved it. It’s a Belgian - English language murder story, set in 1930s England. A group of ‘not yet famous’ Surrealist artists are gathered at the West Dean home of Lord James for an exhibition that will kickstart their fortunes, but…they are sharing the space with a murderer. Man Ray and Lee Miller, Salvador and Gala Dali, Max Ernst, and Renée Magritte are caught up in the action which includes the creation of the lobster telephone, Magritte’s association with the bowler hat, and Lee Miller’s glass pistol. There are, of course, two British police investigators - Inspector Thistlethwaite and Detective Constable Mary Quant (an absolute gem of a turn from Donna Banya). It really is surreal and a weird and wild 6 episodes, but at the heart of it is an engaging who-done-it, with added art and style. The show's title is a nod to Magritte's 1929 work The Treachery of Images, which features the image of a pipe alongside text saying "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" (This is not a pipe). Magritte is the amateur sleuth assisting the police and I am longing for there to be a second series. Do watch, it’s huge fun and it looks like it was very enjoyable to make.

And that’s it for this week. Thank you to all of you who have sent good wishes and kind thoughts—I really appreciate it and I promise you it has helped me so much. So, you all take care, and I will write again soon. x.