Echo and Narcissus

A very enjoyable day today. Smithers and I walked up to the Atrium, where I filled the card stand with lots of new designs. The café was buzzing after the half term break, with lots of Mums, babies, toddlers and pushchairs bringing the place to life once more.

We sat and had a cappucino each, and Smithers was greeted warmly by one or two people who hadn’t seen him for a while. A very old friend of ours, P, who has really been through the wars health-wise over the past year, then came to join us. He has a wonderful sense of humour, and is a fellow wordsmith, so there was much banter between us. He is also a very accomplished musician, having sung in the church choir for at least 65 years, and he also plays drums in the church music group. So of course I felt it necessary to inform him that I shall probably soon be invited to join the music group myself because I have just bought an iPad app and am learning to play the piano ... at 75 years old … and I can now thump out a few bars of Ode to Joy on our ancient portable keyboard no less! We all laughed so much, and it did all three of us a power of good.

Moving swiftly on from my musical prowess, I braved the windy conditions this afternoon to take a shot of the Narcissus ‘Grand Soleil d’Or’ in our front garden. It was so windy that it was just a case of using a very fast shutter speed and hoping for the best. And then, of course, while I was busy looking up its name, which I had forgotten, I came across mention of Ovid’s ‘Echo and Narcissus’, which sent me beetling upstairs to the ‘library’ where I lovingly brought down from the shelf this leather-bound Folio copy of the book. It actually belongs to our eldest son, so I shall be very sad when he finally comes to retrieve it, together with all his other Folio books, to fill his own bookshelves.