SEASON OF MIFFED AND BELLOWED FRUITLESSNESS

What ho, my lovelies!
Goodbye and good riddance to August, the month I usually hate.  February is next from bottom but at least it's shorter and contains my birthday – though that's nothing to celebrate at my age. No one likes November and March can be a bit of a swine, especially if the wind turns east.

But August, groan, is horrible.  It's like waking with a bad hangover on what should be a beautiful day but turns out to be a slutty, shabby and badly foxed day.  One should be loving the late summer, but all August does is give one a head ache and makes one feel lethargic and unsuccessful.

But now comes my favourite 30 days.  Heavenly September, when the lazy old sun can't be arsed to pull itself up out of the frowzy mist until it has enjoyed a restorative ciggy and a scotch.  September days can be like late Billie Holiday recordings – voice is going, but the old glory is still there, gold-hazed, sleepy, seductive but strangely invigorating.

O Lor' what a load of utter tosh.  Please pay no attention.  Now then.  To work, to work,

My autumn border begins to wake up.  Four rudbeckias, front to back: R. fulgida (self sown)  R. subtomentosa 'Henry Eilers' - barely visible on right, spiky flowers,  R. laciniata 'Juligold' further back, hanging ray florets, and R. laciniata 'Herbstsonne,' tall, right at the back.  Asters and chrysanthemums dominate later.  Dahlias dead. [CLICK TO ENLARGE PICS]

And now, the FILM QUIZ
Some of you Tweeted your answers to the first quiz – one of you within minutes.  Thank you.  But if you want the gold star reward, you have to write the answer in the Comments section, on each post – though tweets are welcome as well.

Victoria got it first, on this blog, so the first golden ePrize goes to her.

It was Rod Steiger (Chief Gillespie) speaking to (Virgil Tibbs) Sydney Poitier in the Norman Jewison classic, In the Heat of the Night.

ANOTHER rule, I've just made up, by the way,  is:  No Googling. You're on your honour not to cheat.

So, here goes.  A bit of a stinker, this time, since you were all so speedy with the last:


FILM QUIZ TWO.
Who said this, and to whom:

You're the type women fall in love with . . . I'm the type that interests them.

I'll give you a bit of help:  The above is a translation.  The original dialogue was in a European language.

COW WASH

I learn, today, that as part of the drive to reduce the use of veterinary antibiotics, £1.7million of tax payer's money is going to be spent on research into homeopathy for cows.

Well that's another £1.7million of our hard-earned down the tubes.

The British Veterinary Association refuses to endorse homeopathy which is hardly surprising. Veterinary medicine, after all, is based largely on applied science, rather than faith or magic.

I believe homeopathy to be about as logical and effective as bone pointing or sacrificing virgins. It works for humans who believe in it.  However, it's going to be tricky explaining the concept of Similia similibus curentur (= likes may be cured by likes) to lactating Holstein-Friesians.  And if they don't understand homeopathy, how will it work for them?

And now you'll tell me how wrong I am and give me a raspberry for scoffing at this branch of 'alternative' medicine.

A pelargonium - looks really sexy enlarged!

HORNY EVENING
On Friday, a riveting lecture was given in our village church, about rhino conservation in Kenya and, in particular, the black rhino Diceros bicornis.  Having spent part of my childhood in that spectacularly beautiful country, I was smitten with nostalgia, especially when we were shown slides of the landscapes around Mount Kenya.

Wildlife conservation faces challenges enough in sophisticated regions but in parts of Africa, where so many people live on the edge, priorities are different and it's hard to see how threatened species, in these areas are going to survive.  Eco-tourism is a great motivator though, and when governments see biodiversity as a valuable resource, they are more likely to support conservation.

But what impressed me most was the dedication of the conservation workers.  These are people who have devoted so much of their lives to species preservation, despite the hardship, frequent danger and constant battle to keep nature at the top of everyone's agenda.  We should salute such folk - they are doing so much to prevent damage to our world.

The wrong end of a white rhino, Ceratotherium simum which I photograped in Hluhluwe Game Reserve, Kwa Zulu Natal.

HERE'S TO THE BARLEY MOW!
Also last week, a delectable late afternoon and evening at the famous Peterborough Beer Festival.  It's alway fun, but this was a vintage year.   Tasting companions included my great friend Robin Thain – a frighteningly tall Viking of a man to whom a 12 mile walk is little more than a pre-breakfast stroll – and the legendary laughing archaeologist Francis Pryor.  In his early career, Francis was a professional beer taster and knows a thing or two.  He also has a delicious sense of humour, a sharp brain and grows all his own vegetables plus much of his own meat.  An all round good egg – a double-yolked one, in fact.

The evening was fair and mild; the mild was dark and toasty; the bitters were wonderfully varied.  There were too many 'modern' extra-super-hoppy blond ales but just enough deep amber, gentle, barley-hop old fashioned brews to keep us happy.

Top jaw-drop moment was when an innocent young man, looking neatly dressed and out of place, asked one of the burly barmen if he had any lager. The barman was dumbfounded; a startled silence fell on all within earshot – a classic Bateman moment, Francis and I agreed.  But I felt sorry for the young man who was at first, confused and then crimson with embarrassment.

The beers were in pristine perfect condition and the company was all one could wish for.  Three old men behaving like small boys let loose in a sweet shop.  I tipped quite a few of my 'tastings' on the grass in the huge marquees, but still had a slight headache next morning.

And in case you're wondering, I travelled in on the bus and the PG came to take me home.

Hops in my garden.  I would be without their heavenly, beery September smell.

I'm listening to  Beethoven - an early quartet.

This day in 2006 the PG and I were in the Little Karoo, admiring the South African Spring flora with the mighty Swartberg Mountains in the background.  We stayed at Oudtshoorn.

This week's not-film was David Hare's  TV drama, Page Eight, starring Bill Nighy.  What a perfect combination of two giant talents!  I had looked forward to it all week but sorry, chaps, I thought it was lukewarm, off the boil and sleep-inducing.

All the stuff of wicked conspiracy was there: dishonest politicians manipulating the secret service for their own ends; PMs sucking up to the Americans; our Government conniving with them in Special Renditions – a vile and obscene euphemism – ; Blairish fibs and... oh, I'm getting exhausted trying to remember it all.  I may have dozed a bit, anyway.

Compared with the slickness of the Le Carré stories, particularly Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, this TV drama limped, for me.  The oblique dialogues didn't float my thingy – though, even in the Le Carré, one never got them first time round –  and Ralph Fiennes struck me as being more like an East End thug made good, than a PM.  And to cap it all, it the drama ends with a cliché - but I won't spoil it for you.

Perhaps real current drama, in Libya and Syria, made this all look cardboardy and contrived.  But the more likely problem is that without a Cold War, spy stories just don't work.

(We're also re-watching Kenneth Branagh/Emma Thompson in the Olivia Manning Levant Trilogy,  The Fortunes of War.  Now that's good television and a pretty decent dramatisation of some fantastic novels to boot.

Bye all!  Thanks a zillion for reading.