Heavenly Scent

I'm staying the weekend with Mum and Dad in Essex, and this morning I took Dad to hospital outpatients for surgery to remove a skin cancer from his face, and to have a biopsy taken of another potential lesion on his lip. He seems to be doing okay, having taken it easy for the rest of the day at home while Mum and I fussed over him as much as he would allow (which wasn't very much at all, really).

I didn't want to go out anywhere in the heat of the afternoon, so I nosed around the garden in search of a photograph. There's a sweet-smelling and luxuriant Jasmine plant which climbs the wooden archway leading to a small "secret" lawn. I closed my eyes and the delicate fragrance took me back to the time when, in my teens and twenties, we owned a whitewashed villa south of Alicante in Spain. On balmy evenings, such as those we've had this week, we would join the throng of locals out walking under the huge palms on the promenade. And as we wandered home through the old church square, the heavenly scent of Jasmine would drift towards us on the gentle breeze.