Spring is getting going at last. Some days it’s warm enough to sit out for lunch at our lovely cliff top café, Silas Cove, where it’s just you, the food and the sea. And sometimes, a glass of wine or bottle of beer. Now, just when you need a big fat seagull from one of the usual marauding flocks to complete the picture, none are around.
Talking of marauders, looking down onto the beach below, the low tide dramatically reveals why this was a wreckers’ beach in former times. You can almost hear them calling the boats in peril out in the bay on a stormy night to come in for shelter, only for their hulls to be ripped open on these treacherous rocks. The wreckers, now long gone, were smart enough to evade the Excise Officers, and they knew where the gaps in the rock formations were so they could easily loot the ‘lost’ cargo.
And our old harbour wall, which was damaged in the winter storms, has been repaired in double quick time. Our local council has done well to make it safe to walk along once again. The naughty boys will soon be here tombstoning off the end…
The look of Spring is everywhere. That distinct early season vivid lime green coupled with waves of soft blue and pops of pinky red form the ‘look’. The tough old rosemary fountains and privet balls are out in force giving structure to the front terraces, and the canna pots are showing much promise with their abundant new shoots.
Over in the west garden, the bank of primroses signals that things are waking up and down in the secret garden, there is much promise for this year’s show of agapanthuses. They, like the statuesque cala lilies, can stand the salt blasting they get each winter.
Work on my new book about medical politics and fraud has stalled as we’ve been working on getting Louisa’s Lament into Guy’s Hospital’s 300th Anniversary celebrations in May. We’ve been offered a poster exhibition of the story focussing on the Great Nursing Dispute in 1880. It will be a series of posters setting out the course of events with comments on the underlying political and social issues that threaded through the story. And Guy’s Hospital Gazette will feature some articles to recognise our pioneering women- Matron Burt and her acolytes, Miss Ingle, Miss Lonsdale and Miss Jones, at last.
Enjoy the Spring Burst and Happy Easter to you all.
