Expressions of gratitude

But we have closed the umbrellas over the tables on which we hoped to have tea on warm afternoons. It was a ritual admission that the summer, which never really started, is over. School is back — I can tell by the number of 4X4s outside my house at nine o’clock on a weekday morning — and the wreaths on the war memorial are sufficiently withered to prevent any regrets at their removal in time for new poppies to bloom next Armistice Day.

Only the hardiest of walkers are still tramping through the Peak Park and, owing to illness and incapacity, I am not walking at all. The medical problems are not mine. Buster — we think his 13th birthday is this month — has arthritis and the condition ‘flared up’ when he jumped for no good reason from one of the retaining walls that support my garden terraces. So he cannot or will not walk over the hills and I don’t have the heart to walk without him.