Thursday, July 04, 2019

The news and views form Hepworth Towers


I've had some nice times this week. I played Grand Turismo (racing cars) with my younger grandson on his Playstation; visited the family member who declines to be named - and his lovely wife - and admired their pumpkin patio which last year was just scrub:




played Pooh sticks with Liz; had fish and chips with Chrissie;

photographed the local pop-up poppy field from a different aspect, i.e. from the place described in EVEN WHEN THEY KNOW YOU:

They walked steadily up the steep lane, their strides matching, past the water station with the circular drystone wall that was falling away in disrepair. They crossed the cattle grid and walked up to where the lane levelled off and they could see below a vast sweep of rolling fields and trees. Chatsworth House lay in one direction, and Bakewell in another, hidden by a fold in the landscape.





rode up the Trail, naturellement:




saw an orchid on the Trail and photographed it:




but I have not changed my mind about these wild orchids. Yes they are rare countrywide and thrive on the soil here, and yes, their markings are beautiful, but they grow in ones and twos, and they are tiny - with the flower head two inches tall - and they just don't lift my spirits the way a bank of moonpennies does, or a cluster of cowslips, or a verge of cow parsley. It's clear I respond to abundance as well as to delicacy when I'm cycling. And while we're talking flowers, just look at my lovely astrantia, which I am SO enjoying this year:




I also sold a book on Twitter.

Someone had tweeted that they were going to be 60 


The conversation progressed to Plotting for Grownups 




(which my Twitter friend decided to buy - yay!) and thence to a comparison between turning 60 and turning 70. 

I found turning 60 hard. There was lots of personal stuff going on as well as the whole age thing and the feeling that life was going downhill from there. But it was all psychological.

Turning 70 for me is more about physical frailty, about random aches and pains, about being aware of losing my keys short term memory.

Any thoughts on this, dear readers?



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