It has been an excellent year for blossom in this part of the world. That's a plain old hawthorn in full bloom and there are hedgerows full of them. The gorse has gone, all dead and brown, but now it is the time for hawthorn. I remember Anne of a Thousand Days - the scene where she was led out from her execution, I think, and she pauses to look at the blossom. "Why, the month is May," she says, reminding me that country people still use the old name for the hawthorn.
I am continually distracted from writing. Tennis goes on, and will for some weeks to come, and I'm an addict for this short season. The weather has finally reverted from temperatures in the mid twenties and gone back to its normal grey 18 degrees for a British summer. While the sunshine was so glorious, I spent a good deal of time out in the garden and walking in the countryside. We're never sure we'll see the sun again, you see, and already we're only three weeks away from the longest day.
It may be that I am bored with the story. Maybe I need to start on something new, and shove this one to the back of a drawer somewhere. Surely my lack of interest is telling me something and I ought to listen?
