Rain Did Not Stop Play In Valley's End.

Rain? What rain? Oh, I see, that rain; the sort that falls incessantly, for a week or more at a time, and leaves the underfoot sodden and causes a growth explosion overground. It also turns every view into a soft-focus chocolate box image; green, oh, so green, in a myriad of variations. Is it possible to get so used to it that you greet every stray shaft of sunlight with astonished delight? I believe that the drought has now officially been called off. All it needed for the heavens to open - and stay open - was for the water companies to impose stringent bans on consumers on all forms of water usage, always excepting their own wastage of vast quantities through burst pipes. I daresay they'll find a way to increase prices shortly due to an over abundance of water.

But this is not a post about the weather, although it's hard to get away from it. It's a post about being busy. Like I said in the previous post, lots of nice things happen in summer and the past week has been delightfully busy. There's been gardening, of course, in spite of the weather. Every unexpectedly dry hour, particularly during the long, light evenings, saw me happily ripping out knee high weeds by the barrow load; the compost heap is growing. Gardener's preferred day is Friday, Thursday was predicted to be slightly drier, so we brought our working morning forward - it's no longer a full day, neither of us can now put in an eight hour shift.

Just look what the rain has done to my Nevada rosebush. I have never seen it flower as profusely as this. Each bloom is as large as a lady's handkerchief. (You know what I mean by handkerchief,  the sort of delicate piece of material we used to carry before the advent of nasty but efficient paper tissues.)

 I'll leave a description of some joyous social occasions for another post but there was a wonderful thing that happened to me on a visit to the hospital, of all places. During an eye examination a young and pretty Polish nurse practitioner was taking my details and uploading them into her computer. We chatted a bit about living away from home - we foreigners tend to do that - in between questions, when she stopped, peered closely at the screen, ceased typing and said: "there's a mistake about your age here." When she told me what it said, I assured her that there was no mistake. "No," she said, "that can't be;" she shook her head. "Yes, I can accept that you are over 50, but . . . . . . ."  I let her flounder. She swivelled her chair round, looked closely at me and said, quite seriously: "You obviously take very good care of yourself".

There you are folks, it helps not to go back to nature. The reason for my obviously shiny exterior was possibly that I had been for a facial treatment as well as a body massage during the week. They also say that rain keeps the complexion bright. On the other hand, I got a lift to the hospital in a very beautiful car, a £70.000 Audi (when new) by one of the community car drivers - I couldn't drive myself on this occasion because eye drops made my sight extremely blurry. The driver had stopped by our house the previous day to make sure he had the right address. I saw the car and promptly decided to put rubber boots and jeans away for the day and wear a rather smarter outfit. And ear rings!

I love it when things come together, don't you? And that was only half the week.