Autumn in July

Have reached the stage of summer when I’m looking forward to the autumn.  The wheat is almost over-ripe.  It smells sweet and heady when you drive alongside the fields.  The weather has changed; sunshine gone and a north-westerly wind arrived.  Too cool for a haar to rise.  Some leaves have blown off trees already, but more from drought than autumnal processes.  Meanwhile, the hedge needs trimmed again and there are weedy dandelion-family type flowers growing at my front doorstep that make the house look like someone who has lost the plot lives here.  They may not be wrong.  It only takes a few weeks of covid and Nature takes over as if in affront.  I feel disheartened by Nature.  But that’s more to do with swine sleekit who is not yet dead.  Had thought of escaping into town today, but instead, I’ll need to get out the Gran Canaria triangular tool which will make short work of those weeds.  If I thought I could clobber sleekit with it, my dismay is so raw, I believe I might.  (Must stop watching ‘True Blood’, it is making me bloodthirsty).  The Spanish hoe is a lethal cast iron arrow-pointed triangle, fitted onto a broom handle. An ancient tool to dig and furrow stony soil.  An Azada.  My dad brought two of them back from Gran Canaria in his suitcase.  My mum used to take packets of chicken noodle soup with them on the flight out.  Hysterical.  Obviously, this was decades ago.  Long before the no-liquids, ‘we hate tourists’ eras.  When going abroad used to be fun, if you enjoyed perusing the local iron mongers for useful swag, not markets for sombreros or fake saffron.  Those were the days.  (I have the theme tune of ‘For a few Dollars More’ going through my head).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyV_eb3p3Zw