A Sign of the Late Spring

Until, perhaps the late frosts get it...apple blossom, photographed in our back garden about an hour ago.

Bank Holiday Sunshine

Today is (was) the May Day "bank holiday" -- a public holiday introduced by New Labour in the 1990s to the fury of the Tories, who would far rather celebrate the otherwise ignored Trafalgar Day, so they can prance about being more-Europhobic-than-thou...but what's the point of a public holiday in late October, when it's almost guaranteed to be cold and wet? Mind you, British bank holidays are traditionally cold and wet and grey, so "no change there", as we say in these parts.

But, after a winter that dragged on and on, giving us snow in London the weekend before Easter, and a spring so delayed that it all seemed to happen in a week at the end of April (from nothing at the allotment to a forest of dandelions and forget-me-nots), the forecast for this weekend was warmth and sunshine -- which was pretty much what we got, for most of the time. Saturday was a bit rocky: our visit to the RSPB's newest reserve at Rainham Marshes in east London -- reclaimed from the military only a few years ago and now thriving with a wide variety of birds, from waterfowl (coot, moorhen, shelduck, Canada goose, kingfisher) to birds of prey (kestrel, harrier) to birds more characteristic of a farmland environment (lapwing) -- was punctuated by a series of rain squalls which swept in the from the west, requiring us to break our circuit of the grounds with sojourns in the various hides along the route (where we could at least deploy our binoculars to examine the birds more closely -- I didn't take any photographs, although several of the other birdwatchers we saw on our visit had camera gear of quite astonishing complexity and enormity). We paused for a couple of hours on our return to London to visit Rainham Hall, a National Trust property that is currently only open on Saturday afternoons in April and May -- and in June will close for several years to be thoroughly renovated and restored. As our guide (one can currently visit only by guided tour) said, it is filthy: it seems to have been cleaned only seven times in the three centuries since it was built. (Presumably one cleaning for every new occupant.)



Sunday was a day at the allotment. The day started bright, but slowly clouded over; I cut the grass, scraped compacted soil and moss (and therefore weeds) off the carpets laid as paths on the eastern side of the plot and generally tidied up, while Judith planted out brassica seedlings and harvested things. (Next weekend, I'm sure, we will have to do more of the same -- but let's not think about digging out the two beds left fallow last year and which are now weed-choked monstrosities.) In the pond, largely unnoticed by us until the end of the day, scarlet damselflies hatched out -- climbing to the top of whatever projecting vegetation they could find, sloughing off their larval bodies, and winging away to lay their eggs before dropping dead.



Which brings us to Monday (today). The sun shone, we breakfasted on brioche and orange juice in the garden (me wearing next to nothing, Judith in shirt and trousers and hat), we went to B&Q at Tottenham Hale to buy compost and flat pots for the shelves behind the pond (normal-height pots are being knocked into the pond by the local foxes and/or cats, so we need something that they can't push over -- but B&Q had nothing of use: we may have better luck at John's Garden Centre in Stoke Newington next weekend); then got stuck into stuff -- Judith potting up spare plants for next weekend's Wards Corner fund-raiser, me digging out the bottle edging of two sections of the garden path to straighten same and give a few inches back to the beds either side. From time to time we took a break, and sat out on the lawn to eat spiced bun and read the newspaper.



So ends this holiday weekend. Next weekend, assuming the weather is kind, we will revisit the restored Cutty Sark at Greenwich, where I know that I have not been since the mid-1990s, and walk up the hill to look back at London from the Royal Observatory. In my photo albums there are pictures of our visit to the Greenwich complex in the summer of 1989, shortly after we'd given up CND activism (or had been driven out of it by the tankies); I was thin, I had a full head of brown hair, I had buttock-clutching micro-shorts and fabulous legs: I still have the fabulous legs, but (other than those) how did the rest of me get so old?