The vanishing point

This is my vanishing point too for a little while.

We're off to see our son in Japan

and when I come back I will be roku juu.

If it is your birthday soon,

this is for you -

Missing you already

Tall Cat comes in twice a day now.

Will he miss us when we're gone?

Perhaps we can find a Japanese cat to adopt.

Sitting under a magnolia tree

This weekend

 I sat under a magnolia tree.

I must have sat there for at least two minutes

Then I thought, I really must get a picture of this

beautiful tree and I got up to fetch my camera.

I sat down again under the magnolia tree.

Then I saw another sycamore seedling

(not pictured)

and I got up to pull it out.

I didn't sit down again.

It's a character

flaw.

The scarves are on the line

Once I'd unhooked the clematis and given the line a wipe

I was able to hang out the first washing of the year

and because I have been well-schooled by magazines, blogs

and even cookery books (I'm looking at you Ms Raven)

I knew better than to put out any old uncoordinated laundry.

I washed my scarves and lamented just a little bit
the lack of a shepherd's hut behind the washing line.

and indeed, the lack of a meadow

 and the beautiful Sussex High Weald
behind the shepherd's hut.

Mr Raven, otherwise known as Adam Nicholson
came to give a talk about the Shiant Isles 
(bequeathed to him by his father Nigel Nicholson)
in the Primary school recently.
I met him another time at an Open Day for Perch Hill.
He was taking the money at the gate. 
They work hard.

I really can't begrudge them.

The weekend

The air was of no temperature at all. 

Skylarks upscaled at our approach.

There was no wind.

Motionless ewes stood distant, expectant, unruffled.

The sea flowed innocently over the sand.

Two swans beat and beat their wings triumphant,

the bother of becoming airborne nearly forgotten.

A castle stood untroubled by its past.

The niche needed no embellishment.

Four daffodils could be spared

for the table.

What ho!

Bertie Wooster: Ha! Do you ever feel like opening the window and shouting

that the world is a wonderful place Jeeves?

Jeeves: Erm. . .no, sir.

Bertie Wooster: Or dancing in the street, scattering rose petals on the passers-by?

Jeeves: Only infrequently, sir.

'There is only one cure for grey hair.

It was invented by a Frenchman.

It is called the guillotine.'

I am going to see this.

Hoping to disprove another of Plum's utterances that 

everything in life that's any fun is either immoral, illegal or fattening.

Toodle-pip!

Shibui

A rainbow mixture of tulips from the supermarket

in my Susie Cooper Eyelash jug with a tiny chip in the rim.

Rainbows from the prisms on the window sill.

SHIBUI.

Simplicity,

implicitness,

modesty,

silence,

naturalness,

everydayness,

and

imperfection.