Tag: Ely

Ely, hollyhock season

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A street of nineteenth century houses, mostly terraced, with tall pink and white flowers bursting out of the front gardens

Summer. Nutholt Lane, Silver Street, Chapel Street. The hollyhocks assert their authority once again. In June they shoot upwards and present massed bands of trumpet flowers. Ice cream colours: white, pink, maybe the deep magenta of an upmarket blackcurrant sorbet. The tallest of them tower several feet overhead, and even the short ones spill out onto the pavement as if by right. They take over the front gardens, claiming every square foot of gravel, taking advantage of any crack in the tarmac. Chapel Street is especially blessed with an exuberant forest of hollyhocks. Who needs a driveway, anyway?

Now, at the end of July, they’re fading. There are still plenty of flowers, but further down the stem there are ring-shaped seed heads ripening and drying, exposing seeds packed tightly, vertically, like slides in an old-fashioned projector. More next year. We’ll do this all over again.

Twelfth day (note to self: things get better)

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A car parked on a snowy street. Someone has written "MERRY XMAS" in the snow on the rear windscreen.

It snowed overnight! We don’t get much of it round here; in fact, it’s been almost exactly a year. So either the perpetrator of this mild act of vandalism is keeping the full twelve days of Christmas, or else someone’s driven in quite a long way without clearing their back windscreen.

Anyway, this time last year we had a pathetic little dusting of snow, and I was in bed, in a good deal of pain and unable to keep any food down, as the leftover gas from my gallbladder removal surgery fought its way around my abdomen. (What sorted it out, for anyone in similar straits, was a little pill called Wind-eze. The packet wasn’t very clear on how it works, but it does.) Today, by contrast, I was able to walk across town in my Wellington boots, stopping at the cathedral to walk the labyrinth (still in wellies – that’s a first!) and eat the last cherry cream choux bun in Caffè Nero. So, contrary to my gloomy posts of the last month, I can and do get better.

And it really was ridiculously beautiful. See:

Snowy scene with people walking past a Gothic doorway
Cathedral and bare trees on a snowy day with one stretch of roofs illuminated by pinkish sunlight
Bare trees surround a snowy green. One man stands at the near edge. A just past full moon hangs just over thd top of the trees
Bare branches and the octagon of Ely cathedral are dusted with snow

Thinking of big skies

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Grey road, grey sky, bare trees, green field, band of pale pink at the horizon

I took a slightly longer walk today, long enough for my legs to stop feeling wobbly and then start feeling wobbly again. I came out from the corridor of trees and stopped at the road for longer than I usually would, noticing the pull of the flat land beyond the A10. It was cold, and there was no sun so it felt colder, and I would have liked to cross the main road and walk out under the grey sky towards the band of pale pink. Instead, I carried on, noticing how very cold it was, how very bare the trees, how very spiky their twigs. I reminded myself that I wasn’t going to feel this weak forever, that this wasn’t COVID or pregnancy, that it was going to be a matter of days rather than months. Thought that I ought to pump up the tyres of my road bike for when I should be ready to cross the road, but not yet. Then, in the trees, birdsong: I guessed it was a robin, and then looked up, and up, and saw it at the very top.

Regaining range

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Tarmac path with hedges on both sides and a tree with yellow leaves rising from the left

It’s been a while since I walked my usual walk. Last month I slipped getting out of the shower and bashed my knee: I couldn’t get downstairs for three days, it took me seven to get out of the house, and for several weeks more it was painful if I moved it the wrong way. You can imagine how frustrating this was. Even now I can’t straighten my leg fully. Then I’ve had various things to buy and places to be, so I’ve been using my walking energy getting into town. But today I went out and I walked for fifty minutes, just for the pleasure of going for a walk. It was great.