It's the height of summer here in Bath, and the buskers are out in large numbers, as well as the tourists.I used to find them irritating (in a Scrooge-like way), but remembering what it was like to live in a town which emptied in the summer months, I now appreciate both. As I have already mentioned, you are never more than a 10 minute drive from real countryside here, so I really do have the best of both worlds.
My German dentist friend is due to come and stay for a couple of days in a couple of weeks, we have booked up our mate's house in St. Ives, Cornwall for September and they have just introduced a hose-pipe ban in the North West of England (yes, the same place where houses were washed away by floods a couple of months ago), so things are shaping up nicely.
Wimbledon has finished, Rugby has finished, Paris is empty, one more summer-school to do (by that nice church), so now all I have to do is finish that big stone head and start the rest of the work. It was a wonderful, snowy winter, and now it is a wonderfully warm, British summer. And when this finishes, it should be a cracking season for mushroom hunting. Lovely.
I'm sure the 'characters' in those old photos were actors. We still get them over here; postcards of wizzened old peasants sitting beside a steaming cauldren in a primative cottage (a bit like here), but they're all bit-part actors. And anyway, where did that kid steal the harp from?
ReplyDeleteHe stole it from Getty Images, like I did, Cro.
ReplyDeleteEven you, Tom, are picking up Blogtopia happiness and positiveness. We'll have to keep an eye on you lest you should cease to be insufferable, thus diminishing the entertainment value.
ReplyDeleteFuck off, Mise. (is that better?)
ReplyDeleteMushrooms...now there's an odd category...fungi. Did you know that one 3.5 miles across lives three feet below the surface of Malheur National Forest in Oregon? Mushrooms also purportedly have over 36,000 sexes. As delicious as they are...they creep me out.
ReplyDeleteIt's bigger than that, Jacqueline - the largest organism on earth stretches over Canada, the USA and Russia in a circle that encompasses thousands of square miles. It is SUCH a big fungi, that they did not realise that it was one, single creature until very recently. They believe it to be 100s of 1000s of years old, and they estimate the weight of the mycillia to be around 150,000 tons - and that's conservative, and that's creepy too. AND that does not include the fruiting bodies, which are much heavier.
ReplyDeleteSee...very, very creepy. I think fungi actually rule the world and just let us live here, for now. Gives me shivers.
ReplyDeleteAnts rule the world!
ReplyDeleteWhat was that about 'God's inordinate love of beetles...'? We would - literally - be in deep shit without fungi, which breaks down all the detritus and waste matter on the surface of the earth to form the nice soil in which we grow our vegetables and forests. Then you have the yoghurt cultures, anti-biotics, the yeast for beer, alcohol and bread, etc. etc. I see them as mysterious friends who we cannot live without, J.
ReplyDelete(Mise - I didn't mean it! Please unlock the bathroom door and come out...)