polkadots and moonbeams

Sophie's back! So David is going to make a fool of himself and "aw naw" Ruth is going to fall into the muscular and welcoming arms of Sam. There'll be a cat fight at the Bull with Kirsty and somebody will leave Ambridge forever. There will not, obviously, be any actual sex.

in a rush this evening and bought lots of slightly wrong things - beef and heart cat food (instead of chicken and rabbit) and smooth instead of crunchy peanut butter. Bother. On the other hand, I did catch a glimpse of the Queen Mother's sprightly ghost in the ice cream department. Meanwhile, try as I might, I just can't seem to care about Nectar points. Am I alone in this?

The castles were held on the first Sunday of the week of Santa Tecla celebrations. I don't really know who Santa Tecla was. Edward told me once that she came out of the sea and killed a giant spider, losing her arm in the process. I think he made that story up. The official guide to the festival is delightful but not very helpful. The description of the castles is as follows: "From the last third of century XVIII Santa Tecla has welcomed the best local gangs and they have reached constructions up to nine levels or floors of people like in the mythical celebration of 1881 when it was reached the four of nine without support and the three of nine without support which were performanced respectively by the gangs. At the end of the performance it will be served a vermouth and aperitive with the typical musicians which go always with the humans towers and cheer them " So there you have it. I have to go back next year, if only to get a new offical guide and to see if I can fi

That little boy is very very very high up. The pipers are playing, the crowd is cheering and I am standing there with tears streaming down my face trying to take pictures! Strange and very moving... but you gotta ask yerself... why?

It's at this point that you notice the Very Small Children wearing their very Big Hats. It's also at this point that I always start to cry.

Whoa, steady there gentlemen...

In Spain, last Sunday, I went to watch them making human castles. It all starts with a show of hands...

Seven lemons. There are seven lemons on this little tree which in previous years has struggled to produce even one. Obviously this is all the fault of climate change and shouldn't really be happening in South London but I see it as compensation for that future rise in water levels. At least when my house is under ten feet of Thames flooding I will be able to look back at the happy summer when I grew lemons, oranges and olives in my back yard. Not sure what one really does with seven lemons.. a very small bottle of lemonchello perhaps?

Here he is. The Mighty , The Incomparable , Jeronimo - defending the patch where he faithfully weaves his web every day. As I've said here before, I am rather scared of spiders and certainly can't tolerate them in the house but out in the garden they have their uses and this guy (at least, I think it's a guy, I haven't been that close) has obeyed my orders and stayed firmly in the same space for a couple of months now. He's a big chap - that pot in the background is a 12 incher - and sometimes the mainstay of his web is up to six feet long. It's stood up to some fair winds this week and today he had a bit of a set-to with a cat but I think he will still be there tomorrow. They say it's going to be sunny tomorrow too, so Jeronimo and I will be out there trying to get that last bit of tanning in.