Hello again

We are back from a week’s jolly in Norfolk with the quondam-tropical Godparents. This was on the whole a hoot. We took the car down, and it struck us, as it has struck us before, taking the A17 through the fen country to the immediate NW of the Wash, what a wildly sinister area it is: apart from the sullen acres of cabbages mitigated only by an occasional church spire, the rectories suggest axe-wielding vicars, the grim little mansion houses, squires who have fled, taken to drink, or become werewolves. At one point on the road there is a sign to a development of holiday homes, and we looked at one another: who, and for what, would choose to take holidays in this desolate territory? Another indication of its uncanninness. We passed a field in the region of Sleaford lit with cheerful yellow, which at first glance, made a nice change from cabbages. Er …Yes, definitely. Daffodils. This is the third week of September, for Pete’s sake. Then you cross a lovely swing bridge over the Nene with a little gazebo perched atop, and suddenly you are in Norfolk. No more spires, churches have squat, square, or sometimes round, towers, there are deep banks of trees, flint-and-brick houses, and it is all very attractive. We went, among other expeditions,  to Holkham, a palace built for some perverse reason out of yellow lavatory brick, to Norwich, where Godmama found a gratifying variety of bric à brac which comes more expensive in Edinburgh which he will sell there, and I got a haircut, to Houghton, where Sir Robert Walpole’s pictures have been temporarily returned from Russia to the rooms which were designed for them – always interesting –,  to King’s Lynn, which is pretty awful, and to a perfectly charming Shell Museum. A nice balance of adventure, exploration, some grand houses, some unexpected finds, and country walks. We returned via North Yorkshire, the Borders drove-road from Moffat, and Glenshee. Now we are up to our ears in administration, but at least we feel that we have had an interesting and fortifying time.

Nature again

We stopped off in Turriff on the way back from Aberdeen to do the shopping, and as we made our way back towards the car, I was most surprised to see a red squirrel. It appeared to be tackling a half-crushed Malteser (we were in the lane behind the school). I didn't recognise it at first, partly because I wasn't expecting to see one, and partly because its tail was much lighter than the rest of it which made it look very odd.  Still, red squirrels are nice, and urban red squirrels are an attractive prospect.

Nature Notes

There have been things I was delighted  to see in the last few days. One was flame-flower, aka tropaleum speciosum, the small, scarlet relative of the nasturtium which tends to enliven old Scottish yew hedges and such: I had some, but when dear Tony thoroughly dug over the bit of bed it was in I assumed he had done for it. But it's a Scottish gardening maxim that once you've got the stuff you've got it for good, and lo, it has reappeared. I can't at all work out how it's attached to the ground but it's flowering like anything. Something which, by contrast is flowering for the first and probably last time is torch ginger. This is a relative of the culinary ginger, and lurks in the big pots in the greenhouse. For some years it has produced large and not particularly relevant leaves, but this year, we have had an unusual amount of sun which has been rewarded with wonderfully exotic pyramids of pale yellow flowers. Something I was much less pleased to see this evening, however, was a visiting bat in my study. I hadn't known there were any here, and given the draconian nature of bat protection legislation, I was not at all pleased. Also of course I wanted this particular bat to find its way to the great outdoors, which it did in a while. Miss Kit thought it was fascinating but I couldn't work up much enthusiasm myself.