I’m puzzled by this. Why is her phone asking her a question? Shouldn’t it be the other way round? What’s so funny? And do hormone levels affect the fertility of women and smartphones? I’d guess that they do. Sorry: this isn’t even funny. But I am genuinely perplexed. And irritated by all the fabricated laughing and grinning on posters all over the city. See also: some photos, and a last goodbye to 2021

Most people seem to feel hostile towards magpies. This is what the RSPB Handbook of British Birds says about them: ‘Eats almost anything, from fruit and berries to carrion, and from beetles to dog faeces. Will catch and kill live prey such as small mammals and young birds and will also raid the nests of other species. In general the summer food is insects and other invertebrates and the winter diet is vegetable material…. long persecuted by gamekeepers. During the 20th century fortunes reversed and magpies increased, helped by new forests and a reduction in gamekeeping, and they colonised towns…. the case for it causing the decline of small-bird populations is unproven despite thorough research.’

D. has a fairly new lawn and went in for no mow May. But since the turf was made up almost entirely of good old tough rye grass (also the single biggest component of modern agricultural grass seed mixes) she now has a lawn made up almost entirely of flowering rye grass. She’s not that surprised, but a bit disappointed. Maybe she half magically believed that a lovely wild flower meadow would appear from nothing.

It’s been a terrible year for mildew here in London. Honesty should be showing off its ripening seed pods but they’re blighted and shrivelled and withered. And rust is much worse this year on the leaves of hollyhock. They’ll still flower ok. The disease creeps upwards: just cut the worst affected bottom leaves off successively. You can also do this on many over-assertive biennials such as verbascum and foxglove which spread their big lower leaves out to suffocate their neighbours: they will still flower well. Have you noticed that since fungicides to treat mildew and blackspot on roses were banned, there isn’t any more disease than there used to be? Less, in fact. Which I put down to people giving up on the most susceptible varieties, and nurseries working harder at producing and marketing disease resistant varieties, most of which have actually been around for a long time. Troubling to think that the manufacturers recommended spraying with Roseclear once a fortnight throughout the growing season! They used to say ‘June roses!’, even though they came out in recent years in May. But because of the cold spring, it’s been June again. And they’ve been amazing this year, all over the city, extravagant and bold in neglected front gardens, needing no care. And hawthorn flowers which we call may blossom: in recent years it’s been April, but this year the name made sense.

If you take a look at the last little item in Water, water…. you will see a photo of a section of pavement in my street where some distorted and uneven paving slabs have been ringed with white marker as a guide to future repairs. In the end though, they didn’t do the repairs, they just got rid of the white marks. Only one recent excavation in the street and it wasn’t Thames Water this time, it was electricity. I won’t bother with a photo this time, it’s getting boring. Maybe Thames Water and the others are bored too, they’ll never get the world record at this rate. Good news though: I sent an email to my local councillor to say that a gingko planted last year in the street near my house was in trouble and within a few days they came and fixed the stake which someone seemed to have tried to uproot and mended the tree protector and straightened the fragile tree, which I’ve since watered again. Hackney have an imaginative programme of street tree planting, (see also close to home) there’s even a swamp cypress round the corner with a muscular girth three times the size of its contemporaries which is already raising the pavement. There are liquidambars, the manna ash, walnuts, a daring, vigorous acacia, a koelreuteria (Indian rain tree). Outside number 61 a new tree was so carefully removed that you’d hardly notice that it wasn’t there any more. A neat saw cut at ground level and stake, tree protector and the tree itself all disappeared. I remarked on this to my neighbours who were taking down a short section of wall so that they could squeeze two cars onto the forecourt of the house instead of just one and they said yes, that’s strange, we don’t know anything about it and I believed them, it was only afterwards that I looked at the strong circumstantial evidence and thought, why do people say I’m cynical? In fact I’m too trusting.

This next bit I thought I’d already copied out and posted, but apparently not. It’s a few weeks old already:

One thing about growing old, you become less shy, more chatty with strangers, at least I do. Yesterday at Finsbury Park when I came out of the station a 106 was waiting at the traffic lights to pull out of the bus station, doors already shut, but if you knock on the door some of the drivers will open up and let you on. Some of them will at least turn and glance at you and shake their head wearily. This one just stared straight ahead and ignored me. The lights were still red so I knocked again. He ignored me again. I was feeling a bit stubborn so I knocked again, not loudly or angrily but politely and this time he at least glanced at me and pointed at the lights as if to say no. Then I gave up and said to a woman also waiting, oh well, some will and some won’t. And she laughed and then she and I and another woman began to chat about bus drivers, but though we complained we were also sympathetic, what a difficult job, they have to put up with some nasty people. All the while the bus was still stuck there – he must have been a new driver because what they have to do at Finsbury Park, they’re turning right and when their light turns green they have to move out and block the other lane, not caring what drivers coming up from the right think, in order to edge their way into the traffic coming from the left – if you see what I mean – but this guy just sat there through three or four sequences of lights because his way out wasn’t clear, and I said to the woman – if you think you might write about someone it’s always a good idea to ask their name, sorry – you have a go, go and knock on the door, see if he’ll let you in, so she did and still he just pointed at the traffic lights and sat there, and we laughed but began to feel sorry for him. I saw that she had a set of little fuchsias in a tray. She said yes, as she came out of the station the handle broke and they fell out but she’d stuffed them back in, I said they looked ok, where did she get them, she said Lidl’s, Lidl’s in Walthamstow. Only a fiver. The the two women ended up asking each other about their kids, and how old were they, and saying how exams made them really stressed. The bus finally got away but he’d dithered around and embarrassed himself for so long that the next bus wasn’t long in coming. And today the sun is shining! I woke up, the dog gave me a quick lick, sunshine ran into the room. I remembered that song, reasons to be cheerful, and I thought, that song was itself a reason to be cheerful. That’s probably the whole point but it took me fifty years to realise. 8 a.m. now, must go, I’m off to Lidl’s in Walthamstow.

Mentioning that song reminds me, I meant to say something about ear worms which give me a lot of grief. And I’m wondering if they might be infectious. Wondering if I suggest one you might catch it? Apologies if it does work. A recent one is the worst pop song of the 1960’s. It’s Peter and Gordon singing please lock me away / and don’t allow the day / here inside / where I hide / with my loneliness (loneliness) / I don’t care / what they say / I won’t stay / in a world without love / so I wait / and in a while / I will see / my true love smile / she may come / I know not when / when she does I’ll know / so baby until then / lock me away etc. Google it! there’s a great video. Oh no!- Peter – or is it Gordon – is wearing glasses just like the ones I had at the time. And they’ve got hair like clever sixth formers being really daring. And at the end of the song girls are actually screaming! I’ve also got The church’s one foundation / is Jesus Christ her Lord / she is his new creation / by water and the Word / From heaven he came and sought her / to be his holy bride / with his own blood he bought her / and for her life he died. And then there’s The sun is out, the sky is blue /There’s not a cloud to spoil the view/ But it’s raining, raining in my heart which I now realise I’ve been getting muddled up with it might as well rain until september, there was so much misery, so much pathetic fallacy. Anyway, let me know how you get on with these, I’d like to know if catchy tunes can be catching.