Running in the rain again! Phone apps. Summer nostalgia. My indifference to the love life of politicians.

Well, today I was back to running in the rain. Actually, truth to tell, running in the drizzle. 

 

After rain last night and the night before, the puddly places are busily re-establishing themselves. 

 

But when you have a Donkey Line to run along then running in the rain is not too bad. 

Having spotted a bush full of white flowers on my outward route, I stopped on the way back to try out the plant recognition app on my phone again. 

 

Chestnut rose was what it said they are. Well, of course, the flowers look a bit wild rose-like but the leaves not so much. It’s a lovely name though.

The plant recognition app is a recent acquisition. Quite fun to have, it is nonetheless not quite so reliable as I had expected, occasionally telling me a particular wild flower is something that I definitely know is not the case. I really ought to note down the results of its search mechanism, both to check against my flower book at home and to prevent me from looking up the same flower umpteen times. I am reminded of my vocabulary notebooks from sixth form language studies. We were supposed to note down words we had had to look up while reading the literature component of the course. Looking back over the notebooks, I would find the same word occurring over and over until finally it was properly lodged in my brain. Maybe flower names will work the same way. 

 

The roses in my garden are a bit waterlogged, as I predicted, but not so sad and droopy-looking as the peonies the next door neighbour planted in the back garden. 

 

Yesterday they were standing tall and looking amazing. Today they look very down in the dumps. 

Yesterday, as it began so dull and damp I was reluctant and hesitant about hanging washing to dry in the garden but the sun came out and everything was fine. I had taken the right decision. We walked out in the sunshine in the mid- to late-afternoon. You would not have thought it was the same day.

A friend who lives in Greece commented on the pictures I posted, thanking me for giving her a taste of an English summer. Of course, she only sees the best bits. The really rainy days are not very photogenic. Like my Spanish sister she has a kind of nostalgia for the gentle English summers of our childhood - wall to wall sunshine, rarely wet, pleasantly warm, never too hot. At the moment she is in Athens where she tells me the temperature has been 40 degrees, altogether too excessive for my liking!

Maybe today has a chance of pulling itself together and giving us some sunshine after all, like yesterday! We shall see. 

Here’s a Michael Rosen comment on modern goings-on:-

“I see that George Osborne has become the new Chair of the British Museum. He's just announced it on twitter. I've asked him how he got the job. How do people get these jobs? How did they arrive at him? Did they just ring him up? No one's ever rung me to offer me a job like that. I didn't invent austerity, though.”

Like Mr Rosen, I do wonder how some people get the jobs they do. 

Various people have sent me news about the Health Secretary having an affair with an adviser. Frankly, to quote Rhett Butler, I don’t give a damn! Provided his lover isn’t being given millions of pounds to (fail to) provide PPE or other vital equipment, does it matter what goes on in Hancock’s private life? 

I have been known to rail against betting and the dangers of addiction. Recently I came across the story of a man in Mississippi who lost a fantasy football bet. As a consequence he was supposed to spend 24 hours in a waffle house. Do we have such restaurants in the UK? Places that specialise in what os essentially a dessert? Ice cream parlours are one thing but even those tend to be more take-away than eat-in. Anyway, he was supposed to spend 24 hours in a waffle house restaurant. However for every waffle he ate his sentence was reduced by an hour. In the end he spent 15 hours there. This meant he ate 9 servings of waffles, with sticky syrup as well. Only in America! 

I suspect he might never eat waffles again. He might never make a bet again either!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!