The coming of summer

After what seemed like weeks of dull, misty, cold days the summer arrived in this part of Norfolk yesterday. It was fabulous!

The air barely moved and the birds seemed too lethargic to eat. Even the thieving squirrel (who I secretly love) could not be bothered to brazenly rob the feeders but was probably resting in the tree at the bottom of the garden, cool in the shade of the leaves.

A lazy day moved into a lazy evening and I joined my daughter and her friends for drinks her garden. We live in a row of four tiny cottages – she is one end, me in the other. Molly calls it an experiment in medieval living (she’s an archaeologist and medieval historian). It works for us. She and her boyfriend have built in cat care and I have someone to catch spiders.

It grew darker and the drink was flowing. Suddenly through the twilight came a thundering of paws and Bertie, their cat, flew past the guests in hot pursuit of the biggest rat I’ve seen for a while. As party conversation goes, this was different.

We are lucky to have very dark skies here and ended the evening waving at the ISS and identifying satellites from the night sky app. Apart from the rat experience, it was lovely.

Not so lovely was being woken at 4am by the cutter in the field opposite, slicing down the oil seed rape. It sounded like it was coming through the house – although that could have just been the wine.