The Week's Notes to Date.

1. I was visited by a sparrow hawk again today while I was sitting in the garden with my evening cup of tea. It flew onto the washing line about fifteen feet away and perched there for a while. The sparrow hawk is a rare sight in my garden which usually only happens once every two or three years, and even then they don’t settle down somewhere and watch me. Maybe I should research the question of what the incidence of unusual sightings of hawks is supposed to denote when they’re messages from the universe, or maybe I shouldn’t.

2. Remember the angel Ellie May from an earlier post? Twice this week she’s undertaken to call me back over my landline phone problem, and twice she’s failed to do so. I suppose even angels have the right to be fickle sometimes.

3. I had my visit from Emma, the land agent, today. She was fifty minutes late keeping the appointment, and the first thing she said when she came in was ‘I have a meeting with William (the landlord) at one, so I only have ten minutes. What’s the problem?’ The landed gentry are known to complain that ‘you can’t get the quality of staff these days.’ Meanwhile, we tenants have trouble getting the quality of land agent.

4. I had an ice cream in Ashbourne yesterday. Not such a big deal, you might think, but it is to me. I’m on a mission, you see, to reduce my intake of fat because of the vascular problem, but I’d decided to allow myself one summer ice cream for old time’s sake. Yesterday being a warm and pleasant one, the decision was made and the comestible purchased. It was a disappointment. It was supposed to be vanilla flavoured, but you would hardly have known it.

5. Twice this week I’ve taken an evening stroll up the lane to take an apple and a carrot for my friend Rosie, and twice she hasn’t been there.

I’ve known worse weeks.