Mystery

I don't know what this is. It has appeared in a very shady and rather overgrown corner of the garden. I first noticed it last week, when it was languishing in deep gloom, but on Friday morning I was surprised to find it illuminated by a shaft of sunlight cutting through the hedgerow and yew branches. 

Nothing of great note happened here on Friday, but I forgot to mention that for our Thursday movie night J and I watched Casablanca. She had never seen it, and I enjoyed revisiting it after quite a lot of years. It's one of the first VHS videos we bought, thirty years ago when J was a baby, having caved in and bought a television and video player because cinema trips were off the agenda. It's currently available on BBC iPlayer in the UK. J initially found it a bit difficult to keep track of the complex web of loyalties, affiliations, double-dealing and deceit, but as the story unfolded she began to enjoy it, and to recognise some of the famous lines. We followed this with the latest episode of Call the Midwife, which became our shared guilty pleasure during lockdowns, accompanied by Ben & Jerry's peanut butter cup ice cream - so this was a much more successful movie night than last week's.