Miss Havisham's Ghost

When running in the park, I recently noticed a strange tree, half hidden on a minor path. It may have once been a hollyoak or maybe a very large lavatera, but it was almost unrecognisable as such. The bark and leaves were dry and dessicated, the colour of cold ashes in the grate. As if a terrible fire had spontaneously immolated this tree and this alone. A burning bush perhaps.

The swinging branches, skeletons of leaves still clinging, were laced with what looked like thick white cobwebs. I imagined a huge green-eyed spider coming out in the night to spin the dead tree's shroud. The tree wore its clinging apparel, fans, feathers and swathes of white, with a macabre majesty. Preserved in the act of dying it seemed to glory in its deathly glow, while all around signs of Spring burgeoned in leaf and bud. A thing apart from the normal cycle of birth, death and recomposition.

I named the tree Miss Havisham, and planned to take a photograph of her this morning for the blog. But when I reached the spot, something was wrong. Miss Havisham had disappeared. All that was left was an empty space in the border, a flattened patch of ground, and a few ash-white leaves strewn on the path, like dessicated butterflies.

Life outside the window

Sitting in a conference room, confined to an all day meeting on something I know little about and care even less, I stare at the patch of blue outside the window. To make matters worse, the air conditioning is on full blast and I have goose pimples, even though the bricks across the road are baking in the first really hot midday sun this year. Like a child who cannot leave the classroom, I stare wistfully now at the clock, now at the sky, praying for my release.

It's the thinnest of bonds that keeps me there - tying me in to duty and obedience. I feel that one slight tug with my shoulder to the left would free me, to get up, walk out and bathe my feet in the sunlight. The frustration I feel is more towards myself and my own inertia than my captors. A sense of self-thwarted ambition, stifled creativity, some wonderful possibility gnaws at me. I could unleash a chain of events that would lead to ultimate happiness and fulfilment this sunny day - if only I could move my chair back and take my dulled body out of that cold room and into the warmth the other side of the glass.

But still I sit and stare, stare as if staring would do the trick.

And then, miraculously (but no miracle worked by me) the meeting is over and I run from the room, like a schoolchild once the bell has rung.

Outside I feel the heat as a temporary relief. And then, the warmth, coupled with the hours of boredom that preceded it, makes me only want to curl up and sleep. No great conquests today - that window of opportunity has gone in the time I was staring out of it.

Mediterranean Courtyard Garden

Although the show is supposed to be all about plants and gardens, it mostly seems to me to consist of lorries parked all over my ever greening (except for this) park, and workmen in hard hats eating sausage rolls sitting on dumper trucks. Adding to the many construction projects currently surrounding my area (hey, it's Summer now, the perfect time for dust and drilling), the Chelsea Flower Show is much less glamorous when seen from the Site Entrance.

Having said that, the illusion is maintained once inside this horticultural theme park. The small gardens are always the most charming - more humble and somehow less pretentious than their full-sized brethren, they present an accessible face of green fingered excellence. The hollyhocks stand tall and symmetrical, even the bees are well behaved.

Only the British could turn gardening into a competitive sport, and Chelsea is the decorative but useless garden's Olympics.

But there's something almost eerie about the Provencal cottage garden, the Italian courtyard, the Melbourne hideaway. And then it strikes you - it's the lack of people on these perfect sets. It's not as though the owner could have just popped inside the charming rustic shack for a cup of tea - these are gardens that preclude the presence of human imperfection. A human shadow would be an unwanted prop, complicating the simple lines and spoiling the play of light and shade with their lumbering forms. These are perfect miniatures where only the Borrowers could be truly at ease.

Contrast this with the scene from a true courtyard garden near Gloucester Road. The front of this terraced house is, indeed, a courtyard - little of horticultural note or merit grows in the higgledy piggledy pots, the stone slabs a dull shade of grey and the whole thing protected from prying eyes by an ineffectual and flimsy hedge. But in this garden, since the weak dawning of Spring brought the West light, an elderly Middle Eastern couple sit every evening. They share a white cast iron table, often laid out with a Turkish coffee set, the tall, bulbous stove top coffee pan resting in between them, two small glass cups and a sugar bowl. She wears large black sunglasses and strokes her hennaed hair, while he is nut brown with silver strands atop. The world looks in on them and they look out, seemingly unseeing the passers by. Wrapped up in the moment of tranquillity, that surely has been given them in recompense for long years lived with this earth.

Now that's a courtyard garden I could aspire to have - but not just yet perhaps.

Cab Hut Cafe

One happy consequence of the closing of my bridge is that an arcane mystery of London life has been revealed to me. I have always been intriuged and frustrated by the green cab huts that nestle darkly on street corners, all wooden boards and closed doors, shut up to the public eye. Tardis-like, they are unremarkable from the outside, but who knows what complexities and delights may be hidden within. Only members of the black cab fraternity have access - they must know the secret combination, the well-concealed open hours. The refreshments allegedly provided within are more closely guarded than any speakeasy.

So it was with surprise, a couple of days after the men in hard hats arrived, that I saw the green hut on the Embankment side of the bridge opened up. Folding chairs and tables spread out and a sign advertising tea, coffee and bacon butties. The hut's windows are opened at a jaunty angle and it welcomes casual passersby in as never before.

But who am I kidding? These doors haven't opened for the curious eyes of the likes of me. The menu is incongruous with its chic location - solid, filling food and strong tea in mugs. It has revealed itself in recognition of a workforce close to its native cabbies in need of nourishment, not the commuters in their polished leather shoes, not the mothers with their brightly uniformed children or the idle ladies walking across the river to exercise their tiny dogs on the square of green on the other side. And therein lies the charm. It's a rebellious act, to sit with a white bread sandwich, dripping bacon fat on your chin and slurping dark, dark tea from a big white mug as the fashionable set clip clop past.

Intensive care

The lights have gone out over the river.

My bridge is poorly. A poster plastered on the outside of the hoardings, hiding its true state of disrepair, states that it must be closed and repaired or it may die. Ugly blue corrugated iron replaces the sugar candy colours along its span and men in hard hats suck their teeth as they peel back layer upon layer of my bridge's delicate skin, to see how far the infection has spread.

No cars can cross any more and pedestrians are forced to zig-zag hither and thither, channelled down high blue corridors. We peer through judiciously placed windows to see the mortality of that which we have always thought to be permanent, everlasting. Under the tarmac lie wooden planks, below that some steel girders and the open water. That's all that separates our (now less confident) feet from the deep.

The bridge seems to rock and sway under my feet more than before. I look suspiciously at the engineers - what qualifies them for this delicate surgery? How can I be sure that they won't sever an artery or cut off a limb inadvertently? I keep vigil and hope that all will be well.

Somewhere to sit

There's so much movement in the city - buses rattling down the road, cars accelerating round corners, people pounding with speed and purpose down flattened pavements. Slow down and you risk your life, or at least having your foot trodden on, your back jostled, a muttered curse - the only safe speed to travel in the city is fast.

There are times when you're still - the train held at a red signal, trying not to lean on the sweating person behind you in the tube. Waiting, waiting for that damn bus. It's an enforced immobility, a barrier in the way of the natural movement of urban life, a frustration likely to take you to boiling point.

So it was almost with surprise that I saw this empty bench on the road near my bus stop. I had never even noticed it before, and it clearly wasn't very well used. Passers by swerved to avoid it, so that it acted more as an obstacle than a refuge from the constant kinetic activity surrounding it. But as it sat there, elegant, scrolled, a relic from another age, it became ever more appealing. I wanted to take advantage of the generous curved seat, rest my back on the high wooden slats, allow my calf muscles to relax. It was almost alien - so unlike the narrow, uncomfortable perching posts installed in the modern bus stop where I waited.

I couldn't of course, take such a step out of the normal course of my homeward trail. Too strange, almost a defeat, to allow myself the moment of sweet stillness. A fear, perhaps, that if I allow myself somewhere to sit, I may never again get up.

The Enchanted Forest

This time of year brings the flowering of the Wisteria. Once the showy blooms impose themselves on buildings, walls and even in one case drowning and entire tree in purple pendants, it's impossible not to notice their ancient structures girding wood and timber. Yet just a few weeks earlier, the gnarly grey limbs were good as invisible to the careless eye of passers by.

I love the flowers- they are unapologetically abundant. Like sugar confections on wedding cakes they drip in sweet scented fronds over my path. But it's the creaking limbs on which they rest that really fascinate me. Like the forest surrounding Sleeping Beauty's castle, they encroach like witches fingers on doorways and windows, tap-tapping on the glass in the wind. Disguised by the beautiful decorations, they present Snow White with her fatal apple, steal away Cinderella's slipper and then retreat once more, lying unobserved over unsuspecting front doors.

The consolations of philosophy

Cafe Scenes

In Covent Garden, there's a pre-theatre rush at the French cafe. Tables of people shuffle in and out of the damp doorway with surprising rapidity. I sit drinking peppermint tea, listening, watching.

Next to me, two older women in fleeces and sensible shoes reminisce about the operas they've seen together over the years:
"That was the time I got us tickets for the Rosencavalier"
"Ah, yes. That was good..."
"I don't know what people see in Andrea Boccelli - I have to turn off the radio when I hear him."
"Oh I don't know. He's got a very good voice."
"But one shouldn't encourage that sort of thing."

They fuss over the bill, misunderstand the waitress and unintentionally leave without paying, counting out a handsome tip.

Like a page turning, as they stand up, two young women at the table behind them are revealed.

They share a slice of lemon tart, shaving off thin slivers of citrus cream and pastry as they chat. One - petite, pretty and heavily pregnant - rubs her bump thoughtfully as the other talks about her family:
"My parents can make me feel wonderful one minute and terrible the next. I can never shake off the feeling of being a little girl when I'm with them. I always feel so small."
"Yes, yes. I understand." Her hand soothes the unborn child inside her.

In the corner the waitresses argue over the unpaid bill. One holds her head in her hands while the other puts the tip in the till.

The May

The wind picked up as I walked towards the car, showering pale pink petals all over the pavement. They collected in drifts in the cracks in the paving stones and fell with the camber on grated drains. They piled up like the snow at sunset on windscreen wipers, sticking to hot metal bonnets.

The day was grey and unpromising, but the dropping cherry tree seemed not to realise. Or perhaps it knew that pink really looks most striking against grey: concrete, tarmac, bent metal street signs.

Later, walking to see a new born baby, again the frivolous flurry - seemingly for this tiny girl, all in pink herself.

My mother always calls this blossom The May, whatever its hue or provenance, giving it significance and portent beyond mere visual frivolity. It is as if the natural world were celebrating or heralding the arrival of the golden season with handfuls of confetti, falling all around. Reminding us that it may rain today, but we shall have sun tomorrow. Summer is on it's way.