Tag: tour bus

A Gentle Snow Plough

This morning I posted https://derrickjknight.com/2021/08/31/a-knights-tale-25-a-papal-honour/

By mid-afternoon the earlier Stygian gloom had lifted enough for us to drive to Puttles Bridge and back after buying another, larger, bag of tree bark mulch.

With barely a ripple the now very shallow Ober Water could hardly be said to flow under the bridge.

The root trip hazards, often framing pools of water, are now bone dry.

Two or three families were frolicking in what was left of the stream flanked by dappled woodland devoid of the usual mini-pools. I enjoyed a pleasant conversation with the mother in the first of these pictures, whose son, while manoeuvring a small dinghy, was heard to say “It’s not deep enough”. I told his Mum I had never heard that before.

Ponies, including a large foal, grazed beside the road.

A child had hopped home with one shoe.

Chips fell from a fallen tree.

On our return through Brockenhurst, a Highland cow, with its cumbersome rocking gait, lumbered among the patient vehicles.

Among the multicoloured heather on the moorland beyond the town, other, tail-swishing, ponies with another foal clinging to its mother, grazed or took their ease.

Two remained obdurately planted in the road until a tour bus, like a gentle snow plough, proceeded to shift them.

This evening we dined on succulent roast pork; boiled new potatoes; crisp Yorkshire pudding; crunchy carrots and cauliflower; moist sautéed peppers, mushrooms, and onions; and tasty gravy, with which Jackie drank more of Pino Grigio Blanc and I drank more of the Faugeres.

Lymington Lockdown Relaxed

Although Jackie remembers one birthday on which it snowed, most of her birthdays, like today, have lived up to the epithet ‘flaming June’. She drove me into Lymington, left me there for an agreed 90 minutes, visited a garden centre, then returned to pick me up.

There I purchased a birthday card (of a pop-up owl she had the pleasure of making up herself) and a vase as the first celebratory tokens. I then walked down the length of the High Street and back up clicking away.

Individual captions can be found with each image when accessing the gallery by clicking on any one.

Regular readers will have noticed the absence of Aaron and his crew who have been very busy. This afternoon he came to carry away a vast backlog of garden refuse and to arrange to make regular visits again.

When we told him the story of the recent attempt to wreck the flower bed by being tossed into it he expressed suitable guilt at having left us for a while. This was, of course, all in good spirit. The return is a great relief.

We enjoyed a pleasant couple of hours this afternoon with Helen and Bill, who visited with presents.

This evening we met Becky and Ian at Lal Quilla, where we dined for the first time for months. It was a very pleasant surprise for Jackie, and involved more presents and delightful conversation. After poppadom starters my main course was Taba Shaslick Jalfrezi. We shared onion bahjis, mushroom and pilau rice, and plain paratha. Kingfisher and Diet Coke were the chosen beverages.