I’ve got some interesting things to be writing about this week, but tonight, I’m very sleepy and I’ve got what you might call an early start in the morning. I’m rather looking forward to waking before dawn. I remember years ago, when I was about 10 or 11, at prep school – how I used to love waking incredibly early in the mornings, while everyone else was fast asleep, and climbing out of the attic dormer window and lying behind the wide stone parapet of the old country house (which had been turned into a school just before the war)… and watching the world waking… wildlife on the lawns… alone. Probably the only time in 10 years at school that you could find to be truly alone. And perhaps that’s why I still love getting up really early in London… that sense of feeling you are one of such a small number of people awake in the city. I don’t know: it must be so numbing… to only experience London between the hours of 9am and 9pm – the London that belongs to everyone, not just to you.
Anyway, tomorrow, I’ve got an early start, and a drive across the chalk down lands, in the indescribable soft light of early mornings in high summer, from Dorset up to Oxfordshire.
So I am going to save writing for later in the week. I had friends over for lunch today. Much to their disappointment I hadn’t cooked beef wellington. But I did cook tarts (the recipe from the every-single-time reliable, and delicious, Popina Book of Baking, which as a simple quite specific cookbook I reckon cannot be bettered). Flowers from the garden. I love summer days like this.
Such heat in the day. It’s funny thing really. Do you remember about 4 weeks ago all you could read in the paper was some random story that we are now about to have 10 years of miserable summers? I suppose it’s a particular condition to believe that what ever is happening to you right now is going to happen for ever. Perhaps it’s time to stop trying to predict things, and just to enjoy them as they happen?
I’ve got some interesting things to be writing about this week, but tonight, I’m very sleepy and I’ve got what you might call an early start in the morning. I’m rather looking forward to waking before dawn. I remember years ago, when I was about 10 or 11, at prep school – how I used to love waking incredibly early in the mornings, while everyone else was fast asleep, and climbing out of the attic dormer window and lying behind the wide stone parapet of the old country house (which had been turned into a school just before the war)… and watching the world waking… wildlife on the lawns… alone. Probably the only time in 10 years at school that you could find to be truly alone. And perhaps that’s why I still love getting up really early in London… that sense of feeling you are one of such a small number of people awake in the city. I don’t know: it must be so numbing… to only experience London between the hours of 9am and 9pm – the London that belongs to everyone, not just to you.
Anyway, tomorrow, I’ve got an early start, and a drive across the chalk down lands, in the indescribable soft light of early mornings in high summer, from Dorset up to Oxfordshire.
So I am going to save writing for later in the week. I had friends over for lunch today. Much to their disappointment I hadn’t cooked beef wellington. But I did cook tarts (the recipe from the every-single-time reliable, and delicious, Popina Book of Baking, which as a simple quite specific cookbook I reckon cannot be bettered). Flowers from the garden. I love summer days like this.
Such heat in the day. It’s funny thing really. Do you remember about 4 weeks ago all you could read in the paper was some random story that we are now about to have 10 years of miserable summers? I suppose it’s a particular condition to believe that what ever is happening to you right now is going to happen for ever. Perhaps it’s time to stop trying to predict things, and just to enjoy them as they happen?
