rainbows in curved air (or curves in rainbowed air)

Just Another Diamond Day

Hi just took a weeks holiday. It didn’t begin very well with cloudy skies for the first 4 days. Mostly dry therefore ideal weather for working in the garden. I had some heavy slabbing to undertake. I have to make my gardening life easier as the years go by.

In order to further this aim, I had bought, a state of the art, top of the range, hammock. This was how I would rather spend my days. Searching for those slow lazy days of summers past. At the end of the week they arrived. Intense heat, too hot to work. I just put some of my old half forgotten mixes onto the trusty minidisk player & drifted into another world. Sheer bliss. Lying on the hammock, there was no need to travel on a holiday, putting up with queues, screaming weans & all the rest of that stress. I could do all my travelling internally; eyes closed reliving all those crazy border crossings another lifetime ago. I was travelling through Afghanistan without the aid of a safety net and without bumping into all those British squaddies. What in heavens name are all those soldiers doing in Afghanistan. It makes no sense at all Mr Blair!

Trying to get any work done in the garden is a major task in itself. This is not because I am lazy, far from it, or because I set myself such tough objectives. It is because all my neighbours are so friendly and we all have time for each other. As soon as you try & start something, that would be completed in say, half an hour, they all drop by to chat. Maybe we are protecting each other from doing too much particularly on hot days. This phenomena reminds me of the street sweeper in that Jacques Tati film, where he sweeps the main square for a couple of seconds until someone stops to talk to him & it goes on & on.

Like the street sweeper, many of us have now lived in this street for a long time & this accounts for much of the chat. My sister-in-law is the latest arrival, but she knew most of the gossip already from my wife. There are 2 sisters & their mother all within whispering distance of ourselves & my sister-in-law. I actually find all this re-assuring and it is superb to live among people you can turn to, friends who will help you if they can, or tell you who else you can turn to, if they cannot help.

The hammock has been tried by just about all my neighbours, all shapes & sizes and there has been a lot of interest in obtaining one for themselves. I better climb back on before that sun disappears.