Summer is coming to an end...

[FLY2 10,109]

They've had them in Brookfields Garden Centre for a week or so too. Is there no end to it ?

[catfan 14,793]

LizzieM, You mustn't say Christmas anymore, the PC brigade say we must use the term "Winter Festival" instead.

Can't upset certain sections of society you know !

[NewBasfordlad 3,599]

And to put a real downer on it the bladdy...................................clocks go back 8 weeks from now.

[Bubblewrap 3,815]

I thought C******** was barred from this site till December

[Bubblewrap 3,815]

#28 I don't care what they call what ever holiday it is as long as there are plenty of them

But there again why should I care I'm a pensioner.

[banjo48 928]

If it's any consolation we've had a shitty winter here in Oz's Northern climbes, normally it's like warm sunny English summer days around 28C, but this year, suns been out as usual but the bloody wind has been coming from the Antarctic half the time, cut's you in two literally !

First time in years I've worn long trousers and a jumper here in winter. Summers coming though but we'll now probably have the other dreaded extremes of way too hot. Bloody El Nino or whatever they say.

[Compo 10,328]

I remember those Antarctic winds from my days in the Falkland Islands, banjo. When it blew from the south owt could happen - usually a big snow storm.

[FLY2 10,109]

I've been patiently waiting for my mecronopsis, Himilayan blue poppies all summer, and there's nothing this year except foliage.

Most disappointing.

[Bilbraborn 1,594]

Re #23. Would've looked better with a nice steam loco hauling a Grantham train.

[Blondie 1,392]

No it's not, sounds alright to me...........

[Blondie 1,392]

#28 I don't care what they call what ever holiday it is as long as there are plenty of them

But there again why should I care I'm a pensioner.

Me too...........

[Bubblewrap 3,815]

Hears a song about summer's ending

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLo9yrepDzo

[mercurydancer 1,104]

I'm sorry I am going to get poetic. Not my poetry you understand but someone a lot more skilled at it than me.

The mrs (who is not renowned for her patience) and me set off home from Bruges one summers morning in the pi, sorry heavy rain. After a delay due to migrants we crossed under the channel. Then on the M20, we were held up as two migrants had fallen off a lorry. We stopped in Cambridge and took some photos of the colleges. On the way from Cambridge to Huntingdon the road was shut completely due to some accident. The sat nav was invaluable. It showed us the A1 perfectly. It was below us on the bridge. No way to get on it, however. So, amongst a fair bit of swearing, I saw on the sat nav a place called Little Gidding. Its a place in TS Eliot's Four Quartets. It seemed fitting that we stopped and I looked around and even found a pig sty!

The mrs asked me why we stopped and I got Little Gidding poem on the ipad. Particularly this -

Where is the summer, the unimaginable
Zero summer?

If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you leave the rough road
And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places
Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city—
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. "

I quoted this in my best Shakespearean voice and she just listened quietly. When we drove off, she just replied quietly in Russian, choknutzi, the nearest translation is as mad as a sock full of soapy frogs.

[LizzieM 9,526]

I might have said the same MD but keep taking the tablets, you'll be alright !

[MargieH 7,614]

#39. Interested that you stopped off in Cambridge, Md. I hope you found somewhere to park without breaking the Bank! I'm not surprised that your journey was disrupted by an accident - that's a frequent occurrence on the A14. When that happens, many motorists and lorries divert through our village, which isn't really good for us, but necessary for them I suppose. Little Gidding used to have a religious commune but it disbanded in the late 1990s. I love the comment from your wife about the poem.