Dribbling By
30 June

The rest of June dribbled by.

After some sun came more gloom; the longest day came and went with no fanfare and we hardly felt the benefit. There's little sense yet of long summer days and of sitting out soaking it up.

The garden seems to feel the same way. Some plants have prospered; it's been a good year for the London Pride, the irises, the Californian Lilac and the foxgloves. Others have not; it's been a bad year for the Chinese Honeysuckle, the wallflowers, the azaleas.

As we approach the end of June, the first of the strawberries are coming into season. we shall probably miss the best of them by virtue of being on holiday. However, it certainly looks as though we shall have a fair few raspberries this year as well as plums so there will be fruit to look forward to on our return.

Most of the month has been blotted out by thoughts of the upcoming Baltic Cruise. There's been stuff to buy in preparation, clothes to iron and set aside, travel books and websites to read and lists to write.

Ross's little brother, Sam, will be house-sitting for us for most of the fortnight so as to look after Nutkin and Jemima. It looks as though Sam will be coming to Liverpool in September to study Medicine so he is going to use the time to get used to the fair and noble city.

In amongst all of this, we have managed a couple of events, however.

We took ourselves off to Southport for another concert by the Southport Bach Singers. The first half was all Mozart and included the Overture to Don Giovanni, a couple of organ sonatas and the Ave verum corpus. It was alright but ordinary. We learnt from my Quaker friend Bleddyn that the rehearsals had been disrupted by a fire on the M56 which had delayed half the orchestra and all of the soloists in the traffic jams.

The second half performance of Beethoven's Mass in C was much better prepared and quite enjoyable. I kept hearing echoes of Fidelio, the Choral symphony and the Missa Solemnis, not surprisingly. By the choir's own standards, I would have to say that it could be deemed to be more than an average concert and I do wish that they would drop the little extras (in this case the organ sonatas) in favour of getting home early.

Sunday was Father's day. The third day of our holiday will be my mother's birthday. So I split the difference and visited my parents for lunch on the intervening Friday. More and more, we seem to spend time talking about life and the universe. So, it was good.

The same evening, Ross and I went to the Plaza cinema to see a quirk little film called Brick. It was another in a line of quirky films that I have seen this year. And it was alright or possibly, more honestly, an interesting failure. It tried to meld American High School mores with the language and style of a film noire. It may have been more successful if more of the dialogue had been audible but it was never more than generally interesting.

I was in work on the Monday for a Microsoft Project course. I felt nervous about this because it is a long time since I wrote and last gave the course and so I don't know the package that well. I was also tutoring three of my colleagues including my Deputy CEO.

I was demob happy for the rest of the week and today has consisted of packing and sorting. One more sleep before the holiday begins in earnest.