This walk. Very easy. Very familiar. Very local. Out the front door, along the lane, sharp left towards the farm and follow the sign. Fields of just about ready for harvesting crops. Thistles in abundance. Bees everywhere. Ripening berries and the promise of a fruit crumble in the not too distant future. Boo embraced that whole 'If you're happy, leap through the barley field with your ears and tail in the air' thing. Nearing home after a couple of hours walking, a friend's donkey, Humphrey, trotted over for a bit of a chinwag. Or maybe he was anticipating a treat or two.
This film. Also this one. Both well worth watching if you haven't seen them already.
This sunflower. All snuggled up to a hydrangea growing in a pot near the pond in the garden. I planted the hydrangea (which is of the black stemmed variety). I didn't plant the sunflower. Funnily enough, it's the best blummin' sunflower that's ever grown (there have been many) in any of our gardens (there have been three). In other pots there are cosmos and love in a mist plus still so very green and tiny, marble-like tomatoes. Can't say I'm hopeful of them ever ripening.
This Sunday morning breakfast. Ready in a flash (well, quicker than getting in the car and buying a pack from the supermarket bakery section). Vegan, too.
This book. Oh, gosh yes. This Pulitzer prize winning book. Donna Tartt's third. A big one at 771 pages. Written in the first person. The story of a boy, a tragedy, a priceless painting told over a period of fifteen or so years. A cast of wonderful characters you actually come to care about, flaws and all. A brilliant sense of place, be it New York or Vegas or Amsterdam. One of those books that you can't stop reading but don't want to end. One of those books that is so utterly absorbing you can't get it out of your head. One of those books that you just know you'll want to read again the minute you finish it. One of those books which just might be up there with the best you've ever read. The blurb on the dust cover describes it as breathtaking. It is. Breathtakingly perfect.
'It was all very different from the crowded, complicated, and overly formal atmosphere of the Barbours', where everything was rehearsed and scheduled like a Broadway production, an airless perfection from which Andy had been in constant retreat, scuttling to his bedroom like a frightened squid. By contrast Hobie lived and wafted like some great sea mammal in his own mild atmosphere, the dark brown of tea stains and tobacco, where every clock in the house said something different and time didn't actually correspond to the standard measure but instead meandered along at its own sedate tick-tock, obeying the pace of his antique-crowded backwater, far from the factory-built, epoxy glued version of the world.'
Donna Tartt, 2013
