Paper magnet

I am a paper magnet. I don't mean a newspaper magnate like Rupert Murdoch. I mean a paper magnet. 

Paper loves me. It is attracted to me and finds its rustly way into every pocket and bag.

Partly it is my fault. I enter second hand bookshops voluntarily.  I treasure the days when I discover that an elderly clergyman has died and his family has shipped out his entire collection of Latin and Greek to Oxfam. I don't feel bad about it. It must be similar to how he built the collection in the first place.

However, recently I decided I was being overwhelmed by paper. I decided to go paperless for work admin. It cuts out filing - something I truly hate. I also use a Kindle and Audible for leisure reading. 

However, books still seek me out. 

After conversations I can't remember, people lend me books . I am too polite to return them unread. So they teeter perilously on my bedside table. 

Recently I was one of the finalists in a Curtis Brown Twitter competition.  What was the prize? Yes. Kate Hamer's latest book. I also won a prize in a free raffle which I did not even choose to enter. A book.

Maybe I should seek professional help. Except I'm not a hoarder. It really is not my fault. Paper just loves me!

Green Fingers

A while ago Hilary opened our discussion at house group with an ice breaker: 'Are you green-fingered?'

It wasn't something I'd considered until I heard other people's tales of woe. Some murdered plants with neglect. Others with kindness. 

Whereas my plants and I have a live-and-let-live attitude to one another.  They tend to just get on with growing and every so often  I propagate from them. 

I also tweak cuttings from the gardens of stately homes and often they sprout roots.

My proudest moment was when Nigel gave me a single red rose and I accidentally rooted it.

But best of all are the plants that remind me of somebody else. 

A number come from Nigel's mother's garden; many more from my father's. 

Then there's the rosemary bush from Jane and the Solomon's seal from Alison.

In return, I give away bright rudbeckia and fragrant oregano.

So maybe having green fingers is no more than treading the path between kindness and neglect - and not thinking about it too much.

Boscawen Park x 3

Boscawen Park is a charming place, but I didn’t expect to visit it three times in two days.

I arrived in Truro Tuesday afternoon and took Mum and Dad straight out to the park for a toddle round the lake.  We spotted swans with seven cygnets (shouldn’t somebody write a popular Christmas song about this?), gave grain to the ducks and even to the glossy purple-black rooks who have muscled in on the act.

That evening, I was meeting Fiona to go to the pub.  I’d assumed somewhere in town, but she’d chosen the Heron at Malpas, so her husband kindly ferried us to Boscawen so we could walk the rest of the way along the tree-rooty footpath beside the river.

In the mean time, ignorant of Fiona’s plan, I’d arranged to meet Jennie on Wednesday, in order to walk to the Heron.  Where were we meeting?  Boscawen Park of course.  Jennie turned up in slingbacks so we chose the road this time.

But even though I’d visited three times, Boscawen Park still managed to spring a surprise on me.  I was watching the surface of the lake, when two beady eyes met mine.  Surfacing to grab a breath of air was a large terrapin.  They are not native to the UK so it must have been an abandoned pet.  Good old Boscawen!