Not just a bowl of cherries...

I started writing this post last week but was not pleased with the way it had turned out. It seemed a little preachy, a little proselytising, a bit too touchy feely, even for me. In the interim I have been devouring Alan Bennett's superb collection of recollections and diary excerpts - " Untold Stories", and his writing had given me a push in the right direction. His use of language eg not being afraid to use less than modern constructions, good grammar, anglo-saxon derivations (you know what I mean) when it makes sense to do so, fills me with admiration and is a joy to read. Most of all he writes in a very detailed and yet very economic way. He doesn't get carried away with flowery prose but uses words carefully and for their very specific meaning or specifically for their double entendre. Reading Bennett makes me proud to be an adequate user - of the English language that is - and encourages me to up my game.

So it was I determined to rewrite this piece and to make it less pretentious and more accessible.

Following my sojourn in London, one of the very first things I noticed on my return to Hellemmes, was something noticeably red, or rather obviously red things, half way down the garden. I hurried, indeed precipitated towards cherry tree where its fruit were almost fully ripened indeed some have already cascaded to the ground and lie like so much colourful punctuation in the grass. I found one that appeared to be ready to eat and enjoyed it, not so much for the flavour - OK but nothing fabulous - as the fact that it was from our our tree in our garden.

As I made my way back towards the house, I sensed a superb fragrance in the air the source of which soon became apparent: the honeysuckle had blossomed. I had wondered whether we would have the prolifically flowering kind or the less generously endowed yet more fragrant one. There was no doubt now that this was the latter. I looked around and took time to notice properly the burgeoning geraniums, the cherry tomato plants ladened with maturing fruit, the grace of the new olive tree and the beauty of the hanging basket crammed with petunias, fuchsias, and verbena. In my rush to get to the cherries I had missed these equally wonderful plants.

I wondered to myself how often in my rush to get to the cherries in my life I had managed to to bypass the equally intoxicating perfume of the honeysuckle, and the summer scent of tomato? I promised myself that I would give time to more than just the seemingly important, the most obviously "urgent", and to try to keep everything more in context, to give the positive at least equal billing with the negative.

Life is rarely, if ever, just bowl of cherries and even cherries have stones.

PS Having now spent time harvesting, not only is it really hard work and very difficult, but half of the fruit, despite looking lusciously dark are in fact beginning to rot. Appearances can deceive!