Over the weekend I watched a feature length spectacle of romance and murder – live, right in front of me. This was X-rated stuff; all hearts and flowers for an hour, then a short and violent sex scene, with a chilling finale.
Really…. not in a nice middle class garden, please.
I was sitting in the shade, reading Sense and Sensibility again, with a long glass of melting ice at my elbow. My garden was full of stripey orb weaver spiders, their exquisite webs strung about, waiting for lunch to buzz in. One spectacular web was a good ten inches across, the main suspension cable anchored to the wall at one end and hooked to a branch of the Japanese acer about three feet away. Its creator was a huge madam, her body fully rounded, with six long elegant legs – a bit of a spider babe, if you ask me. She’d been there for at least a week and by the look of her had picked a good strategic spot to catch lunch on the wing.
All was quiet, apart from the whizzing of insects and the chatter of my blackbirds; then on the edge of my vision was movement… Read more
Colour in black and white 