Beauty...

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This is what my eyes have been beholding today.

1) The keyboard of my computer at work; beautiful because extremely useful and well-suited to the work it is meant to do.

2) The view of Kew Green out of the window - dry, golden grass, soft green cushion-y linden trees, and sunlight. Earlier there were kids playing cricket. Now a group of young blokes are booting a ball around. One of them is in full team colours for some football team or other, complete with player's name (unreadable at this distance) on his back. One has stripped down to a pair of chopped-off shorts - he has a fine physique and is laughing at something as I write.

3) A blackbird sitting & singing on the parapet of the white stone portico in front of the office.

4) My new ring - I bought it a few weeks back in one of those mad ethnic-and-odd-stuff shops where if you want a flowervase shaped like a seashell, red and black rag rugs, and a doorcurtain in six different shades of luminous plastic beads, you'll be very happy indeed. The ring is made of little cut-glass crystal petals, wired together into a flower shape - lilac, sky blue, red, rose pink,a rather faint green and bright yellow. In the centre, the "boss of stamens" is a single sparkly clear glass crystal. It's unusually girly for me but it charmed me when I saw it and it still does now.

5) The ox-eye daisies outside the rear door of the office, and the wonderful array of delicate grass-seed heads in the patch of uncut lawn, now involuntary hay-meadow, where the daisies have grown up and flowered.

6) My little cut-out figure of Rimmer (from "Red Dwarf"), which still manages to be both rather sweet and terribly funny at the same time.

And many more, too many to count but blessings all.

I've been tired most of the day; my evening out with K. turned out to be as I'd expected. She is pretty cut-up about losing her aunt and her grandfather, but at least with regard to the break-up has now moved on from the stage where one cries a lot and says "N.'s left me, how can I go on?" to the stage where one says "N. is a knob!". From my own past experience, i think this is healthy, and a necessary stage in the recovery process. And anyway, N. must be a knob, to treat K. like this.