pumpkinstrokemarrow

Yesterday afternoon to Hampton Court for what seems to be our first visit since April 15. Pleasant afternoon, warm with a light breeze. Rose garden looking good, particularly considering all the rain we have had in recent weeks. In addition to the roses there were some interesting human inhabitants. For example, a well dressed (and subsequently slightly embarassed) Italian lady rolling around on the grass with an infant while an enthusiastic father took pictures. A large sub-continental family with the western clad gents. taking pictures of a western clad daughter with one of the most elaborate cameras I have ever seen, while the older ladies, smartly turned out in their saris, nattered. A very striking and well dressed young lady of outstanding thinness and outstanding high heels, a young lady whom one assumed worked in some profession in which vanity was important.

Onto to the various flower beds along the east front. Some fine foxgloves in the main border and some fine displays in the beds. The Palace gardeners certainly know their stuff when it comes to putting together a display. Remarking on the way that displays of this sort are like paintings in the sense that there may be a proper distance to view them from: a really good display will work at anything from fifty yards down, whereas a less cunning one is best appreciated at some specific distance.

Privy garden up to its usual standard although one wondered about the lone carp in the rather murky circular pond. Walked out down the western beech arch - which have must have been a splendid place for strolling & display on a hot summer's afternoon. Two splendid aloes on the terrace, a plant for which, for some reason, I have a soft spot. Not sure about a forest of them, but as specimen plants, great.

Yesterday evening mainly devoted, for the second time in six months, to 'Mrs. McGinty's Dead' (see November 26 last). A cunning entertainment in that it was entirely watchable this second time around, with neither BH nor I being too clear about what had happened by the time it had.  Continue to be amused by Christy's inclusion of a version of herself as an also starring. And once again there was a certain amount of nodding. Followed up with a quick skim through the book and decided that the adapter had been pretty fair to the spirit of the thing, despite various liberties with the plot. The various homilies about good taste and servants, of interest to the wannabee upwardly mobile of the time (Ian Fleming included a fair amount of the same sort of this stuff in his Bond books, a few years later. I have read that we were well up for this sort of stuff after the rigours of the home front, followed by years of rationing), largely lost in the sugar coated costume drama. A lot of wrinkles in the plot ironed out - which was perhaps just as well as we could not properly grasp what we did get.

Perhaps I should have turned up my excellent diagram of the book before the show rather than after. Although that would not have decreased my irritation that the capture of the Powerpoint slide in the blog seems to have done bad things to the resolution, to the point where it is only just usable.