Sunday 4th September 2016

Sunday

A day or rest. And a day with no football. Well, until the early evening anyway. So it means we can lie in bed, ignoring Mulder's pleas for breakfast and the drips of dribble as he thinks it is breakfast. In the end, we give in and one of us gets up to feed him. And as usual, it takes one, maybe two mouthfulls before heading off outside.

We have coffee. And breakfast, and ponder what to do with the day. Maybe go to a gallery, or a museum. But not sit around the house like we did the day before. In the end, I decided for us that we should go for another Ghost Orchid hunt, which also involves a walk in the woods, seeing what we could see And a walk in the woods is never wasted.

So after breakfast, we gather our stuff together and load the car for the short drive to Barham. Two weeks ago we found a new colony of Violet Helleborines, and so we were looking for more, even though the season is all but over, but also for the ever elusive Ghost Orchid, and an almost certainly to be fruitless search, but if you don't look, you wont find.

Rain was forecast for later, but for now, the sun shone and wind was light. Deep in the forest, sunlight fell through the canopy, causing dappled light, in which I hoped to see at least one Ghost. But of course, we found none. But we did have a fine walk, up and over the down, following the path to where we saw the helleborines before. And they were there, now mostly gone to seed, but two small spikes were still in flower, not bad into September. And we found another spike further along too.

I walked through drifts of leaves, hoping to see a waxy stem of the Ghost, but now. Just more leaves and so fungi.

We came back round to the car, and being nearly eleven, which meant by the time we got back home it would be lunchtime.

Interesting fact; there seem to be more names for a bread roll that almost anything else: barm cake, bread cake, roll, muffin, bap, baguette, and so on.... Anyway, rolls and roast beef for lunch, and then a smoothie mid-afternoon.

I had foolishly decided that we should replace the lawn with a wildflower meadow, so the first part after ordering the seed was to prepare the ground, raking up grass to create bare patches before broadcasting the Yellow Rattle seed. I had to prepare 10m square, which took half an hour, then scattered the seeds whilst the cats looked on, almost amused.

That done, I prepared for a couple of hours on the sofa watching England, which was as painless as we feared. But, with seconds remaining, England score a winner, and celebrate like they had won the world cup, which I can assure you we won't in two years time.

By then it was seven, and I had to cook dinner, pack, call Mother dearest. And also drink 70cl of Trappist beer which I thought was a good idea to go with the chorizo hash.

And that was it. Weekend gone, and time for bed.

Oh my word. And tomorrow, back to Denmark and train to London over the new viaduct.