Simply seething ...

When I was a child on holiday on Arran (I'm sorry - I seem to be sinking into constant, geriatric reminiscence these days) we had a family joke based on the reaction of my aunt to seeing some people on the beach we frequented in Brodick. We avoided the village beach, the one with the beach huts on it, the one we called "the Loud Beach", in favour of Strabane beach, which was less accessible and had at the far end two white beach huts and an enclosure fenced off from the huts to the tide line, reserved for the Duke and his family from the castle. Usually "our" beach was pretty quiet - half a dozen small groups, perhaps, spread out along its length. But on the occasion in question, when my aunt was down visiting us, there were people very close to where we liked to sit (the cheek) and my aunt, in her best pan loaf tones, declaimed: "It's simply seething". Instantly this became the watchword for any situation where we perceived more than one or two people. You can tell I had an eccentric childhood.

I found myself saying it today. With rain promised for the afternoon, and another inconvenient appointment, we decided to get out before lunch. Roadworks on the Toward road put us off risking the tyres on raised manhole covers, so we headed out with a thought of going to Benmore Gardens. When we arrived, the car park was so full we had to abandon our car in a bush and abandon any thought of going in via the desk, and instead walked round the gardens and up a steep forestry track that eventually leads onto the hill behind the gardens, which we climbed during lockdown. We did, however, enter the gardens by one of the back gates, at the top of the hill - and came upon this sight. So many people! Sitting in the Andean refuge, dawdling along the path, chatting at intersections ...

Reader, we left. We have annual membership of RBGE, so have no conscience about not paying for entry (free to members), so we marched briskly off down the paths that aren't immediately obvious to the uninitiated. I suppose I should be happy that so many visitors are coming to keep the gardens solvent, but I have to confess that I've become used to having the place more or less to ourselves. Even in normal circumstances I'm put off by seeing too many groups; in a time of pestilence I become positively paranoid. Maybe once the English schools go back ...

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, the members of the Tory government in Westminster go on being pathetic on national television. Their boss is on holiday; his Gollum-esque puppet-master is nowhere to be seen. They seem to come from another planet, and yet they have control over our future, a future that looks bleaker by the day. 

Time for oblivion, I think. Goodnight!