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This morning we each tackled the weeding of the Shady Path from opposite directions. Jackie began in the left hand picture; I progressed in the right. We aim to meet at the bench. The Head Gardener says the last one there is a sissy.
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Meanwhile the rhododendrons in the Palm Bed are filling out nicely. Please ignore the wild garlic in the second image.
Having moved the stone urn from the front of the Pond Bed, Jackie carefully planted it up after lunch.
We then took a trip to Ferndene Farm Shop to purchase eggs, salad items, and trailing petunias, after which we drove into the forest.
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When we turned into Forest Road a bunch of cattle were occupying the tarmac and the verge. Jackie parked the Modus so I could follow them with my camera. As they left me trailing they rapidly began to disappear from sight. Jackie caught me up and transported me to a point ahead of them.
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Most of the cattle crossed the road into woodland opposite.
One young heifer was rather left behind, and stopped for a drink, no doubt to ease its throat,
strained by its incessant efforts to imitate the Isle of Wight foghorn.
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Her plaintive bellowing was ignored by the rest of the group.
Eventually, still bawling, she returned to the road and, with the usual awkward gait, walked up the hill and, stretching her neck, stood on the bend further straining her voice. Several hundred yards further on we noticed another small bovine gathering, and Jackie, probably correctly, surmised that she had become attached to the wrong herd. We assumed she would find her own family.
Some weeks ago, my friend Barrie Haynes asked me to review a book by a member of his group. This is ‘In the Dead of Night’ by Richard Allen. It is the sixth in a crime fiction series published by Amazon. I finished reading it today.
Without spoiling the story I can say that it reads rather like a film script, published last year, and, given that it is mostly written from the viewpoint of the interviewing detectives, put me in mind of the contemporary ‘Line of Duty’ series. The author brings his knowledge of police procedures gleaned from his career in the service.
It is, nevertheless, an engaging mystery. The spare prose of the short sentences is packed with precise detail, even to the extent of times being quoted to the minute, as if extracted from a policeman’s notebook. This helps move the pace along. The longer paragraphs do not always flow so well.
Author’s notes, given at the end of the book, differentiate between fact and fiction in the narrative.
My copy is not paginated which made it rather difficult to know where I was at times, and a certain amount of further proof reading would have been helpful.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s savoury rice packed with vegetables and topped with a thick omelette; Lidl rack of pork ribs in barbecue sauce; and tender runner beans, with which the Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden and I drank Recital Languedoc Montpeyroux 2018.