Author of The Sparrow Sisters
The forsythia is blooming so it’s time to prune the roses and plant some new ones. Of course, the forsythia starting blooming just as a whole wad of snow fell so I’m not entirely confident I can use this old gardener’s rule this year. Never mind, I’m hauling out the compost, the loppers, the shovels and the bonemeal and hoping for the best!
Dahlias, darling
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| James |
I am in a state of longing. Spring is such a near thing and yet, this morning, the little pot of ivy I left out is rimmed in frost. Frost! I rub salt into my homesick wound by checking the London weather on my computer dashboard: 75 all week. I squeeze lemon into my emotional paper cut by watching the Kings Road web cam obsessively. I can see the school children in their woolly jumpers and tidy lines serpentine along the footpath on their way between playing fields and classrooms. For a moment I am sure I see my own in that line. Perhaps it’s because my photographs of that time are so blurry?
When I first came to London there were things I believed the English did better than anyone else. I still do, even the irritating customs. Some of these habits are long-standing: driving on the left (that’s from reigns in the left hand, lance in the right), others are newer: the English proclivity for queuing left over from the war. Most are almost holdovers from the days of Empire. The English can make noblesse oblige look as natural as breathing.