OK, this is getting silly.
31 degrees now and I have ceased to function.
I have to do everything r e a l l y s l o w l y....... The ground is baked hard, the greenhouse at the weekend was 46 degrees and rising. The thermometer stops at 50! This weather is fine if you are lying by a pool with a book (how dull) but I want to go on my usual long, brisk dog walks, garden, stir pans of bubbling chutney, bake fragrant cakes, move furniture around and sleep! Alas, the heat is showing me up for what I am - a pale, freckly, blonde eyebrowed, factor 30 wearing Anglo-Saxon with heat rash.
This week I have been mostly -
Listening to Radio 4
Studying weeds
Sitting in pub gardens with a pint of ale whilst insects nibble on my lower limbs
Drinking herbal tea
Making salads
Lurking in the library
Reading
Eating strawberries and ice-cream in bed
Wednesday -
Esme made a scarecrow for the veggie patch
Meet Tom
Thursday -
I strung up the garlic, poured spuds in to a hessian sack and hung some herbs to dry
Oregano and Sage
Friday -
A hot walk involving me walking up this hill twice - Big Dog got bored of me constantly stooping to photograph wild flowers and decided to go AWOL for nearly 30 minutes!
Bind weed - or as we called it when we were kids, 'Granny-pop-out-of-bed'
Scotch Thistle - makes me think of tartan and shortbread
Groundsel
Why are smells so evocative? I love the sweet, lemon sherbet smell of Groundsel. One sniff of this rather unassuming weed and I am a child again, standing on the gravel drive at Villee Farm, my grandparent's house. The memories come flooding back......
- flocks of starlings at dusk
- orange twine
- cows lolling over the dry stone wall at the end of the garden
- the organ in the freezing cold front room that we never sat in
- being frightened by the ghostly sound of the wind through the front door keyhole
- watching Grampy smooth Brylcreem on his hair, his braces hanging down and his shirt sleeves rolled up
- Nanny standing a loaf of bread on it's end, buttering it and then slicing it sideways! She could peel an apple in one too.
Grampy (on the right)
Me and Grampy (good 1980's hairdo!)
Ragwort
Mallow
This is common on roadsides and waste places, especially in the South
Small Bindweed
Bindweed kills plants by twining itself around them and always twists anti-clockwise.
Wall Lettuce? Not sure......
Field Scabious
This plant likes dry, chalky soil. It has other more romantic names:
- Bachelor's Buttons
- Lady's Cushion
- Pins and Needles
In early days it was thought to cure scabies. It was also thought by herbalists to be a remedy for skin complaints ranging from wounds and sores to dandruff and unwanted freckles!
May weed
Persian Speedwell
Scarlet Pimpernel
This tiny plant prefers chalky soil and closes it's flowers when rain is approaching. Hence, it's other name:
- Poor Man's Weather Glass
Friday -
Lunch with my wilting weeds in a jar
In the afternoon I met up with Maisie (middle chick) for tea and cake at my favourite cafe in Salisbury, Fisherton Mill Gallery. Entering the Gallery for me is like being in a sweet shop...... So much eye candy and a feast for the senses. Sumptuous scarves, tactile earthenware, unusual jewellery, hand made leather bags - I can dream......
Maisie had chocolate brownie and home made lemonade
On returning home I ironed with the curtains shut (nice and coooool.....) and listened to a great programme that I had recorded on the radio, all about this place - Shakespeare and Company. It's a book shop on the Left Bank in Paris and a place I would like to visit on my 'bucket list'. Some of my favourite authors have stayed here seeking peace and inspiration - Jeanette Winterson and Anais Nin to name a couple.
Throughout the programme, you could hear the tinkle of customers playing on the bookshop's piano.
From the programme blurb -
Stuart Maconie travels to the Shakespeare and Company bookshop in a bid to understand how a winding, twisting, bohemian bookstore in Paris has become a draw for generations of writers.
Since its beginnings in 1919, Shakespeare and Company has played host to an extraordinary range of authors. James Joyce and the Lost Generation of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein communed, borrowed books and exchanged ideas in the original shop founded by Sylvia Beach.
A bookshop dedicated to empowering writers, it was Sylvia Beach who first published James Joyce's Ulysses. George Whitman took up this mantle in 1951 and attracted the writers of the Beat Generation including Allen Ginsberg, William S Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Anais Nin, and Henry Miller. In a rare interview, Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti speaks to Stuart Maconie about his relationship with George Whitman.
It was not just these famous authors who worked, slept, ate and loved in this "socialist utopia masquerading as a bookstore". Stuart Maconie meets with Sylvia Whitman, daughter of the former owner, to discover the lives of the 30,000 aspiring writers called Tumbleweeds who have found shelter among the books.
Professor Andrew Hussey OBE discusses the bookshop's contemporary cultural contribution. In a literary landscape dominated by digital downloads, Stuart Maconie investigates if this labyrinth of bookish treasures can remain culturally relevant or if it has become a museum to its past.
A cosy nook for a 'Tumbleweed'. A customer once screamed when she stumbled on a body asleep in the art section!
I can't think of anything better than snuggling under the covers at Shakespeare and Company.
I'm off to dream of dusty bookshops...
