The 8th of May

 

My garden looks prettiest in the first few weeks of May. The snow-in- summer (Cerastium tomentosum) opens its star shaped flowers above short silvery leaves. The geraniums unfurl baby blue petals. My aquilegia trumpets soft pinks, creamy whites and many skirted deep blues. And the climbing rose’s cerise coloured flowers set against the dark wood of the contorted willow tree are a heartbeat of wonder.

No one has ever seen this, except for me.

This is the time when someone should call, but no one ever does.

So this time, very early in the year, I sent out an invitation.

“The weekend of the 8^th of May…  please come and stay.”

Many weeks later, my friend writes back, , and tells me that she will be decorating that weekend.

I am saddened to come second to pots of paint.

 

Another friend then tells me that in early May she will be running in a charity event just up the road from me.

Cheered I ask,“Which weekend?”

“The weekend of the 7^th May,” she writes.

“Come and stay,” I say.

“Okay, that will be great,” she replies.

 

Months later, when we chance to chat, I tell her how much I’m looking forward to her visit.

“Oh, I’m going to stay with XXX instead,” she says, in a throw away comment, that I only just manage to catch.

Then I realise that if I had not mentioned it, it was unlikely that she would have told me about her change of plans at all.

XXX lives two miles away from the event; it’s only a two minutes walk to the event from here.

Long ago XXX had an affair with my friend’s ex-husband, before he was her ex-husband. My friend knows this. 

It seems  this time I’ve come second to spots of taint.

 

Yesterday, my friend travelled all the way from the north of England to an event, just a hop, and a skip, and a jump away from my house, but she did not call in.

Though I did have a phone call.

“I am ringing you to tell you that your computer has a virus.”

It is the sing-songy Jasmine Flowered Indian Lady trying her phishing scam once again.

I don’t argue with her. I gently put the phone  down on the carpet, and then replace it in the cradle. Later, I wish that I had invited Jasmine Flowered Indian Lady to visit my garden on the 8th of May.

 

It rained all last night.

 

And I discovered that the guttering which had been fixed, but  had not yet been put to the test, is still not working properly.  Water  streamed down the brickwork, only more so.

And then this morning, when I look out at the garden, a smaller visitor, a cat, is to be seen raking  the grass after having just left something steaming behind.

And then when I step out into the garden, I discover the newly opened delicately petalled roses have all been bruised and battered by a heart attack of rain; that the trumpeting aquilegia are now all downturned and muted, that the geraniums  have become grim geriatrics barely able to raise their heads from their beds.  And worse still, that overnight dandelions have sprung up like pirates, tall and proud, to claim domination of this green ocean with their serrated cutlass blades.

And then, as if nothing could be any worse, there is the yapping sound from a small, white dog.

Pudsey, it seems, has been found.

They  have him on a long lead.

 

And it’s just as well, as my clouds darken.