Sex and the Countryside.

Tonight’s post was going to be all about House, and how American writers and producers seem to be very confused about the connection – or lack thereof – between love and sex. I started writing it in my head, but in the end even I became confused so I dropped it. I thought I’d say a brief word about the Shire instead.

I was walking along Church Lane today thinking about the recent and very worrying report issued by the UN on the ways in which human activity is seriously messing up the planet. And then I looked around and realised how isolated from the bigger picture we are here in this little English country backwater.

The trees are looking wonderfully healthy this spring in spite of the unseasonably cold weather we’ve been having lately. There’s a venerable old copper beech in Church Lane which has easily the widest spread of any tree I’ve ever known anywhere, and this year I swear the weight of new leaves (they’re a deep, coppery red for those who don’t have the beauty of copper beech trees to enjoy) must be putting quite a strain on it.

And then there’s the proliferation of May blossom on the hawthorn trees and hedges. I noticed the buds a week or so ago, but now the flowers are breaking and parts of Church Lane are seductively perfumed with their heady scent.

Farmer Stan’s traditional hay meadow is growing strong and lush, too. Traditional hay meadows are much less commercially efficient than the modern practice of growing monocultural grass strains and collecting two or more crops of silage every year, but they look so much richer and they’re far better for the birds and insects. And that, at least, is one thing we’re still getting right in our little backwater as long as there are farmers still prepared to work that way. All we need now is four days of dry weather at haymaking time around the end of June and the job is complete. Must remember not to don my robes and shake my rattle at the blue sky around about then.

And you know, of late I’ve been much consumed with the fact that the afternoon of my life is moving into evening and twilight is fast approaching. I look into whatever future I have left and see only a dark place populated by demons. Well, I suppose as long as I have the means to walk freely among the perennial pleasures of an English country backwater, it needn’t necessarily be so dark. And as long as there are heady scents in which to luxuriate and unicorns to look out for, the demons might be kept at arms length sometimes.

Da Capo

House and Cuddy are now an item. They proved their unequivocal love for one another not only by saying as much, but also - and much more tellingly - by having sex three times in the space of a few hours (or was it four? I lost count.) But then they expressed doubts with their eyes at the end of the episode. Well, they say the pen is mightier than the sword. Maybe the eyes are mightier than... the other bits. No doubt the confusion will be resolved in the fullness of time.