An apology

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Well, all I can say is the most enormous sorry. I ruthlessly drive off to the south of England and stop all the blogs.

I do have excuses. But I hate excuses. They always sound like the dog ate my homework. (I cannot blame the Pigeon for this, nor any canine.) It has been a combination of technical glitches, lack of actual internet, social life (about which I forget, when I am immured in my hills; one cannot just say, Oh how lovely to meet you, now I am going to do my blog, or at least, I can’t), the making of several soups, serious discussion of dangling modifiers with the Man of Letters, packing, unpacking, the catching up with the nearest and dearest.

Still, it is a shocking state of affairs, and I should quite forgive you for muttering furiously under your breath like Mutley and asking for your money back.

I am writing this now at the Beloved Cousin’s kitchen table, in the first moment of silence. All the small people have been fed and bathed and put to bed. The dogs – two elegant black ladies of this house, and my own dear Pidge – are slumbering gently in front of the fire. The cousin has just come in and recklessly opened a bottle of the good claret. We shall eat some beetroot soup for health, and get an early night, and tomorrow I shall be more settled and return to proper posting.

I would love to promise you stellar blogging from here on, to make good this shameful lack, but I do not want to raise hopes only to dash them again. (I laugh ironically at the idea that my blogging is ever stellar, but I have, of course, a desire now to overcompensate.) I can, however, vow a return to regularity. And perhaps a little catch-up of my last four days of travels. There shall also be pictures. The camera has not been out once, although the weather has been uniformly murkish, so you have not missed much on that score.

I only hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive.

Pictures are not of the day, but a tiny selection of the things I left behind in my garden. At least there is some colour to divert you:

The beauty and gravitas of The Pigeon, which remains constant: