It's Not About the Bike

I've never read Lance Armstrong's autobiography, It's Not About the Bike, so I cannot say what conclusion Lance makes as to what it IS about.

But as for my own upcoming cycling adventure, which consists of four middle-aged friends and their five teenage daughters attempting to cross Catalonia by bicycle, I can say that it is about nine suitcases, padded bike shorts, lots of granola bars, many bottles of suncream, sunglasses, water bottles, about 30 swimsuits between us as a rough estimate, maps, moaning, whining, fear, teasing, nicknames, lycra, chamois butter for our bums, sandals and smelly trainers, several cameras, a copy of The Shadow of the Wind, and hopefully, lots of Rioja at the end of each day.

It should have been more about the training. I went on exactly one bike ride, and had to push my bike up the steep hill. Sigmund has trained by drinking red wine almost every night; my teenage daughter has been on a strict "resting" program; and little daughter thought about taking a bike ride, but discovered that she had outgrown her bicycle . . . probably a few years ago.

Wish us luck.

And by the way, does anyone know the word for "taxi" in Spanish? Or is it Catalan?

Unsettled

Stormy weather

The weather has been extremely unsettled lately, and so have I . . .

On Monday, I was driving across the broad Oxfordshire Downs and it was like some weather god was bowling black clouds. Every time he made a strike, the car shook from the impact.

Yesterday, a friend and I made the trek to the Hampton Court Flower Show and the moody sky glowered at us all morning. Although we managed to duck into the Rose Tent for the first downpour, the second one caught us on the way out. I took this picture just minutes before the smooth surface of the water was disturbed by a million angry raindrops.

Hampton Court

The day was more silver than gold, except for these roses.

This display of Absolutely Fabulous roses

won a gold medal

It was the first time I had been to the annual show, and it was all a bit overwhelming. I think that it is probably better to go with a plan, instead of being buffeted about by the crowds. All of the serious gardeners had brought trolleys, which made the paths a strange sort of obstacle course.

That's been a bit of a theme with me, lately, as I seem to have overcrowded my schedule to the point of lunacy. Instead of relishing the long summer days, I feel like I have been running the gauntlet -- somehow worse for being largely self-imposed.

Some people like being busy, but I've realized in the last couple of years that I require a slower pace. I tried to cram in a lunch with old friends today, but I was time-crunched on both sides. I felt like a babbling, bubbling pot that was about to boil over.

We've been in England for three years now, and I wonder if I am feeling unsettled partly because we have always tended to move by the end of this cycle. My husband has a new boss, and unsurprisingly he want to re-organize. It's a story that has a predictable conclusion, even though this is still only the beginning of the a still-uncertain end.

One of our closest family friends will be moving soon. The other day, my daughter said that it feels like a wind of change is blowing through . . . which is exactly what I have been feeling, too.

Henry and his Birds

King Henry the VIII: a man who knew all about regime change.

Sweetpeas in the fruit and veg bed

At least all of this rain is good for the garden . . .

Love in Idleness

Please visit Barrie Summy

for a complete listing

of this month's book reviews

Frank Cadogan Cowper, Titania Sleeps in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1928)

Summer is lying heavily on us right now, and the oppressive heat does seem to stir up all sorts of mischief and mayhem. I long to retreat to Cowper's shaded wood, but instead I must find my refreshment in the pages of novels.

I rarely read (or do anything else, for that matter) with much method . . . instead, I tend to flit from book to book as fancy dictates.

But I was so entranced by Hearts and Minds last month that I immediately resolved to read all of Amanda Craig's novels -- in the order that they were written. It was the easiest of tasks, as they are just the sort of fiction that I like best: well-written, intelligent, and peopled by interesting, complex characters.

Craig has a penchant for unlikeable protagonists, and there is something slightly sharp and sour in most of her novels. She tells a fast-paced, often episodic, story in a manner which reminds me of Jilly Cooper (but more highbrow). Like Cooper, she links the novels together with recurring characters. Now that I am well-acquainted with her fictional universe, I can't wait to see whose story will be continued.

As the briefest of synopses, and in chronological order:

Foreign Bodies -- the coming-partially-to-age story of a young woman who flees from England to Italy to learn about love and art

A Private Place - an unlikely romance is a catalyst for adolescent anarchy in a "progressive" English boarding school

A Vicious Circle - love and ambition in the fiercely cynical world of London journalism

In a Dark Wood - a middle-aged actor, dissolute and newly divorced, learns more than he bargains for when he starts delving into his past

Love in Idleness - when family and friends go on holiday together in Tuscany, romance and confusion ensues -- a la A Midsummer Night's Dream

As happenstance would have it, I started reading Love in Idleness -- the last of my stash of Craig novels -- at the height of the summer solstice. Descriptions of languorous summer days and the sensual Italian landscape seemed as appropriate as Insalata Caprese for lunch.

If you've ever shared a holiday home, you will readily recognize some of the inevitable conflicts: differences in expectations and budgets, clashing parenting styles, and perceived inequalities in sharing the work-load. Into this prosaic mix, Craig introduces love and lust and a few otherworldly elements.

In some sense, we always abandon our workaday selves when we go on vacation. Being in a less defined, less restrained environment allows for all sorts of possibilities. Like Shakespeare before her, Craig understands that love is transformative, too . . . and that sometimes we suffer from delusions and, yes, make asses of ourselves. If you know the story of A Midsummer Night's Dream, you will enjoy finding the parallels between characters and plot, but it is certainly not necessary for an appreciation of this delightful story.

At the moment, as so many of us are packing and preparing for our summer holidays, we are also casting about for the perfect summer book. Love in Idleness manages to ooze heat, and yet it is as light and bubbly as a glass of good Prosecco.

So now I've been to Italy, but does anyone have a good suggestion for Spain?

Seeing Red

Red poppies and pale pink lavatera

I think that I've been spending far too much time in the garden . . . I'm starting to read "signs" in the flowers.

After two months of pastel lushness, tall red poppies are springing up everywhere. I don't remember planting them. Perhaps they seeded themselves?

Over the last week, the burning sun has scorched the edges of flowers and grass. The Met Office has issued its first heatwave alert. We can't sleep for the early morning light and the suffocating heat.

The colour red, as you probably know, has the longest wavelengths of light. Summer seems to be gathering its energy. The long days are intense with it.

Red is also the colour of anger -- and love. Our weekend was emotionally jagged; the heat builds up, and then there are storms.

Midsummer Magic

Watering the borders

nepeta (catmint) and cotinus (smoke brush)

Do you think that a responsiveness to nature is a genetic gift like any other?

Are some people born more attuned to the ebb and flow of the natural processes all around us? Are they more inclined to notice the beauties around them? Are they more likely to feel nourished by what their senses can absorb?

And why do some landscapes speak to us, while others don't -- or at least not so much, or in the same way.

I've never felt that I was particularly responsive to nature, but there is something about England that makes me feel like a tuning fork which is vibrating to the perfect pitch.

Last night I was watering the garden in the early evening . . . and there was this magical combination of hot sun, cool earth and the smell of water soaking through herbs and flowers. I wish that I could capture it in words: the deliciousness; the sensual quality of pure notes of rose, thyme, lavender and basil.

I always feel keenly aware of that moment when the sun reaches its peak, and then begins its slow, but inevitable, decline again. It has that gorgeous repleteness, but also that shadow of decay, like a ripe piece of fruit or a full-blown rose.

Another kind of magic:

the first ripe raspberries

Last November, we planted raspberry canes in the dull wet ground. They looked like lifeless sticks, and it was hard to believe that anything would or could fruit from them.

All through the spring, my daughter plotted the progress of rough green leaves and then tiny green beads and then, in late June, ripe red fruit. (It is midsummer, but autumn's apples and blackberries are already emerging, raw, hard and green.)

I wonder if gardeners find it easier to accept that the nature of life is constant change. Being new to cultivation, I am constantly surprised how quickly plants flower and fade or just lose their shape. Last week, the nepeta which was a perfect mound all spring had to be cut back. It had sprawled, and grown leggy, smothering a rose, a fuschia, a heuchera.

Today I read: One morning, Polly saw a crimson rose show its heart to the sun, only to fall in a cascade of petals by the end of the day. (from Love in Idleness, by Amanda Craig) Only a few days of sun and the ground has baked hard and dry. The roses fall apart in my hands.

Every clear, warm night we eat outside now. We try to follow Herrick's advice.

Pub Lunch/Shadow Shot Sunday

The pub:

hub of socializing

cherished by the English

for its rituals

beer and idle chat

good grub

a smoke (no more)

but still, the shadowy scent

soaked into wooden beams
and trod-upon tiles

Sunday lunch

in Oxfordshire

nothing to see but sheep

on the hillside

blessed sunshine

hot enough

to justify umbrellas

(but not the rainy day kind)

strong enough

to create shadows

on nearly the longest day

of the year

the sun and clouds

play

throwing down shadows

over this country quilt

the landscape looks so empty

but besides the sheep

there are two of us

with love to my Father

on Father's Day

xx

I'm a rogue (or is it off-road?) blogger on Shadow Shot Sunday

sponsored by Hey Harriet

Green Acres is the place to be . . .

"Farm living is the life for me"

I've always thought of myself as a city girl. Just give me a whiff of that acrid city air and it's like leaded petrol in my veins.

For three years now I've been out of my natural habitat, and bogged down in the countryside. Instead of taxi fumes, the air smells of wet grass, honeysuckle and the earthy tang of manure.

I've adjusted to clean air; I've come to love the quiet of the place; but the one thing that I cannot wrap my head around is the subject of animal husbandry.

I live next-door to a farm, and every morning as I depart for the school-run I see some unfortunate jodphured person mucking out the stables. It combines everything I like least: mud, stench and hooves. I'm deeply grateful for the work that farmers do, mostly because I'm glad that I don't have to procure my food the hard way. I know that I am like Marie Antoinette at Le Petit Trianon, dabbling in my strawberry plants and hen's eggs, but I'm content to rely on the grocery store as our primary food source.

Although I exist on the fringes of actual agriculture, occasionally I will wander into the trenches, and then be as surprised as an Alice who fell through the rabbit hole.

Last Friday night, my husband and I attended a Farmer's Ball -- my rather airy description of a fundraising event to help local farmers in times of need. (It's an emergency fund, really.) General impressions: Lovely Food (new potatoes and rare roast beef and properly sweet strawberries) but Worst Disco Ever. (The Nolan Sisters? The music was cheesy more than 30 years ago.)

I was sat by a German farmer and his wife; I will call them Hans and Helga. They are the most extraordinary pair: equally strapping and hearty, and always smiling and laughing. They are like a cross between an apple dumpling and an Oom-Pah Band. You might think that the stress and disappointments of farming would result in dour dispositions, but these two act like the world and everything in it is a great jolly joke.

I've no idea how Hans and Helga came to live in West Berkshire, but they've been local fixtures for two decades at least. I've known them for about a decade, and encountered them mostly at chilly "summer" barbeques and Bonfire Nights. Perhaps because I am usually leaning against the AGA, trying to stay warm, they tend to tease me. They treat me like a delicate flower or lace doily: something pretty, "precious," and ineffectual. Although I am usually wearing jeans and a fleece, they make me feel like Eva Gabor in a filmy peignoir.

Despite generalized good-will and a casual fondness, Helga and I tend to bring out the stereotype in each other. When I discovered that she was originally from Bayreuth, I immediately asked her if she had ever been to the Festival. She found this deeply hilarious. "But doesn't everyone ask you this?" I said. "No one! Never has anyone asked me this!" she replied. "Only YOU would know this," she chortled, and then leaned over to share with Hans this great joke. Then, widening her eyes, she confided me: "I did see The Ring Cycle once. Ten hours on a wooden bench. NEVER AGAIN."

At some point, the conversation turned, inevitably, to chickens. I have two hens; Helga has sixty, give or take a cockerel. She proceeded to tell me a lurid tale, sort of a cross between Chicken Run and The Exorcist.

For reasons which weren't entirely clear, Helga decided to "do away" with one of her cockerels -- a mean and stringy old fellow. First, she bashed him unconscious with a wooden board. Then, she cut his throat with a knife to finish him off. Finally, she buried him deep in the muck heap "so that the dogs wouldn't eat him." (Each stage of this murder was related to me with much chuckling and chortling.)

Has anyone guessed the punchline? It was the chicken who just wouldn't die. The next day, one of her daughters commented on the "strange chicken" walking around the yard like a drunken sailor. Like a grisly spectre, the cockerel had risen from the muck heap . . . and was listing around, head lolling at its side.

Apparently, he went on to make a full recovery.

Knife crime takes on surprising forms in the countryside.

one of my pampered chickens