A Hopeless Ramble.

Ants and flies, thousands of them. I’m talking about my garden in today’s second nod to sub-tropical sultriness. It’s all over now, though. Early evening brought a few growls of distant thunder, then the temperature dropped, then the rain came. And the darkness fell early.

Tomorrow it’s off to the city for coffee and croissants with Helen. Well, coffee anyway. That stuff’s dear enough in coffee shops as it is without taking out a mortgage for accompanying pastries. It’s H’s birthday on Thursday (odd how I seem to get on so well with Cancerian women. I’m not supposed to. I think I’d get on with Scorpio women, too, but I never got close enough to any to find out.) I got her brandy and a book. My book. She did say she wanted one.

So now I start the diurnal descent into my dolorous time. (Lancelot’s castle was called Dolorous Garde in Mallory, if I remember right. Or it might have been Tennyson. I’m told it was modelled on Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland, and was given the appellation ‘Dolorous’ because it was where he ran off to after losing Arthur and Guinevere. I reckon he must have been a Romantic, poor chap.)

I could do with a set of tide tables.