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Nasturtiums are the yardstick of frost. When their thick tendrils go limp and soggy and the flowers droop, we know that frost has arrived. On an overcast morning of this unseasonably oppressively warm day, I wandered out in the garden to take the measure of them.
The flowers may look a little careworn, but they are bearing up well.
I then spent far too long fine-tuning my complaints letter to a partner of the O’Neill Patient legal firm before finally posting it by recorded delivery and e-mailing copies to our mortgage broker and to Becky. A much more pleasant task was the final bit of paperwork as an executor of my late friend Wolf’s estate.
This involved Jackie driving me to the Post Office in New Milton. We continued on to Tanner’s Lane in time for a pre-sunset look at
the shore,
where a weak sun gleamed on the water.
Gradually
the hues deepened.
While watching this, I became aware of distant exuberant voices, until one small boy rushed past me, came to a standstill,
and waited for another to join him. Perhaps you can’t run so fast in Wellies.
Off they both continued, still testing their lung capacity,
until a somewhat larger lad divided them.
Bringing up the rear was a young woman I took to be the mother of at least one of the runners. She said she often brought them down here, where they loved to run about or throw stones. They would rather do that than anything else. “What could be better?” she exclaimed.
As I returned to the car I admired the cloudscape over the Isle of Wight and The Needles.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s succulent steak and mushroom pie, creamy mashed potatoes, crisp cabbage and crunchy carrots. The Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden and I drank Reserve des Tuguets madiran 2014.