Small volcano cones of soil particles have started to appear on the rough ground where the dog and I walk most days. The ants are waking up. What with the pink snow of blossom under the cherry trees, spring is definitely here. The ants' spoil heaps seem entirely appropriate at the moment, the right size for their builders. Later in the summer there will be highways, cleared of any and all debris, snaking for five or ten metres through the herbage. Some of them will be busy with ants going back and forth harvesting seeds, others completely bare. Then they'll switch around as new harvests become available.
In the days before the Palm Pilot, being a bleeding edge, hip kind of guy, I had a Psion organiser. And a Filofax. And to tell the truth, I used the Filofax much more than the Psion. It was easy to scribble in cramped places, using odd stumps of pencil. It was reasonably easy to find a phone number...
Another perfect Saturday, sunshine and blue skies. A clarion call to the garden centre and the terrace. On the way to the garden centre I was distracted by the need to do weekly shopping at the supermarket where, Lo!, two-year-old olive trees were on sale at 5.90 each. So I bought two. Then to the...
It's been a day for memories. First off there was a care package from Rob and Lynn and Ellie back in the UK. Perched among the polystyrene beads were not only two fine videos and a CD, but a box labelled "Perishable! Eat me now!!" And inside that, four Chelsea Buns from Fitzbillies in Cambridge....
The world is divided into people who have children and people who do not have children. But yesterday I became aware of an even more fundamental division, between people who have children and people who have children and put them on their answerphones. This is mawkish sentimentality of the highest d...
