Smiling in Slow Motion

JUNE

JUNE Tuesday 1 Up early, a most beautiful warm day. We planted up the new raised bed with French vegetables: pissenlit, black radish, salsify and other exotics. The garden is very battered by winds this May, one of the foxgloves is blown quite flat and the poppies look a little frazzled, but in spite of that it is looking more beautiful than I remember. The sage covered by hungry bumbles and the poppies fought over by my bees. The front doorstep and cobbles are done. In the post a cheque for £1,700 - thank heavens, as I've overstretched myself with my improvements. Wednesday 2 HB took my temperature, 101°, so I stayed in bed and ate cherries and sweets. Thursday 3 The thousand signs in the eye clinic have been taken down, just Social Workers' Clinic Times and Walk-in Psychology Clinic are left. Christopher Lloyd's article on Prospect Cottage is in Country Life; the photographs make it look jungly and exotic, the article precise and very informative. Of plants, he suggests sea holly - I have tried growing it, but it didn't work. Maybe I should try again. I'm so weak in the legs, a washed-out rag of my former self, my strength drained away. I stagger down steps and haul myself up them. The belladonna closes in, soon I will be unable to read. Another day gone. Friday 4 Feeling much better today, my weak legs gathered a little strength. Ate some cherries for breakfast. HB very cuddly. Sitting here this morning, the stunning flower-strewn meadows that France still possesses crept into my mind's eye. Daisies, scabious, every 358 JUNE imaginable summer flower. There is nothing like that here any longer, just a few buttercups in the corner of a field. Saturday 5 HB and I filmed Alexis' [Bisticas] graduation film in Hampstead. Danny Maggott was there and helped me home, via Bart's, where I was dripped. Alexis, who has been ill, seemed in a terrible emotional state, unbelievably sad. Connie said he had regressed to his childhood, with his mother and sister constantly in attendance, tears, hugs and a huge sense of relief when we could finally leave. HB played his saxophone, missed his bus and got a train to Newcastle. It's been a sad week - Bernard Simons died quite suddenly at the age of fifty-two, from a heart attack in a Madrid hotel. Stuart Marshall, the film-maker, collapsed with heart and liver failure after flying back from the States, where he had been taken after he fell ill in some Mexican complex for alternative therapy. Stuart was one of Duncan Campbell's targets in his attack on alternative therapies. He ran Positively Healthy, whose chief achievement was to bring the problems with AZT into prominence. AZT has haunted HIV care from the moment it was first given to people in massive, and toxic, doses. From this poisoning, a thousand rows and much tragedy. I'm not against alternatives, but when the chips were down I had to take the conventional path. Stuart was brilliant, organised a whole regime for himself, but didn't see past the quacks. David, my next-door neighbour, had a sore knee, his doctor has discovered cancer. He's to be scanned tomorrow. Every view ends in illness, the whole world staggering into the grave just a little too soon. It should have begun in ten years' time, but started ten years ago and now it's all but over. I wonder if any of this will be remembered; probably not, as in the scale of human tragedy it is very light. Cholera, or other infections of the nineteenth century, are now only remembered in medical books. Julian and Nick brought me down to Prospect Cottage. The garden looked more beautiful than ever with the bright-blue sage, huge fluttering white crambes, blue cornflowers and poppies everywhere - all bathed in the clove scent of the pinks that are falling all over the place. I watered the plants that looked down at heart - the new fuchsia, the acanthus andone of the roses. 359 SMILING IN SLOW MOTION Derek Ball promised us supper, but at ten we gave up and ate here, radishes and purple rocket added to the salad. Sunday 6 Beautiful, calm and sunny morning. The garden at its best as a thousand red poppies are in bloom, jack-goes...