Spiky dahlias

M always has wonderful dahlias in his small but productive village garden, and dahlias always remind me of my dad, who was proud of his assortment of blooms in all shapes and colours. M's garden wall is always one of the best to peer over, revealing neat rows of salad vegetables, canes supporting rows of sweet peas and climbing beans, plump raspberries and more. 

I dragged J out for some fresh air towards six, when the rain eased to fine, misty drizzle. She was willing enough to join me in a circuit of the village - her new rain covers have significantly increased her acceptance of less than perfect weather. We found pink flowers everywhere: roses round doors, hollyhocks beside walls, shy bergenias peeping from banks, and roadside verges full of tall pink-mauve mallows. The rain soon worsened again and we returned home at an unusually brisk pace, but there will be plenty more to photograph on a sunnier day.

I'd been with J all day, as her PA was feeling rather unwell and had been in close contact with someone who subsequently tested positive for Covid; we decided it was better for her to stay at home. It's always hard to let go of a day's support, but after our four long years taking great care to keep J safe, we don't want to take risks now: there are media reports of a significant upsurge in cases, with increasing hospitalisations and deaths, and anecdotally we are hearing every day of people we know who are ill with it. 

I didn't, in the end, stay up all night listening to election news as I normally do: the exit polls, reported at ten o'clock when polling stations closed, were fairly conclusive, and the first few declarations, mostly from north eastern constituencies I know from my years living in Durham and working in Sunderland, started to establish the pattern of the night.  Having looked up estimated times and established that most of the places I was most interested in, including our new and former constituencies following the recent boundary changes, would not declare until around 4 am, I went to bed at two. I couldn't resist turning the radio on for a few minutes when J called me to turn her over sometime after four, and was pleased to hear that Green party co-leader Carla Denyer had just won her Bristol seat; the rest had to wait till morning, when I discovered that the map of true-blue Kent, where Labour taking Canterbury two elections ago and just holding on last time had created a single little red island, had now somehow become mostly red. I'd seen the predictions, but had still barely believed that Folkestone and Hythe, once the fiefdom of former Conservative leader Michael Howard and with an absolute Conservative majority for as long as we've lived here, could be lost to Labour. We're now in Ashford constituency, where a long-established One Nation Conservative MP has also been unseated. I'm pleased and hugely relieved at the change of government, but anxious at the enormous difficulty of the situation they now confront and the speed at which their new-found voters will lose faith when they don't see quick fixes. I wish I had real hope that Labour's rather timorous promises, constantly limited by their terror of being portrayed as a party which would increase taxes, can really rescue our failing public services and stem increasingly populism.