Sweet ...

I don't suppose I deserve my sweet peas to do much - I bung the seeds into my home-made, lumpy compost and leave them unsupported until they're a tangle of haphazard fronds and then expect them to perform, so I suppose I was overjoyed this morning to notice colour among the greenery of the largest pot, whose plants are now relying on the rhododendron bush for support. I was especially taken by the darkly luscious colour of this deep purple one, hanging there half-open with the raindrops sitting on its surface, so - a photo from before breakfast.

I don't know where this morning went, except that I was feeling sufficiently recovered to take offence at the sight of our spare bedroom, still a dumping-ground for all the stuff we brought back from Edinburgh and which was abandoned when I took ill, so I attacked it with feeble determination today, remaking the bed with the duvet we'd had away with us and putting away the clothes that somehow had become spread over the bed. It now looks positively inviting ...

And in the afternoon I went for a walk with a friend, up the back road where we used to escape the town during lockdown and along the forest road leading north till we were looking down on the school and the beginning of the golf course. As we were talking as well as walking, I was pretty tired when I got home, but a great deal more cheerful. We had pasta with pancetta and broad beans and truffle pesto - and some colourful odds and ends from the veg box in the fridge - and finished off with some cherries. And we listened, crazily, to Get it On, where our #2 son had once again had himself mentioned with some erudition about past popular music and the information about what he was currently cooking in the south of France. As you do ...

And I remembered back 15 years to when we had a holiday in Italy with him and the family, including 2 year old Catriona, and bought sausages in a shop which also sold a small, rubbery-faced doll that Catriona wanted and which, for some reason, we called "Craig". Pronounced well in the back of the nose, the name was enough to reduce us all to hilarity.

Try it ...