Ephemera

Here are three beautiful things that I have experienced recently:

1. Flowers
There are some lovely flowers out at the moment. It is, of course, freesia season, which not only looks and smells simply delicious but also throws me into a perfumed sea of reminiscence. Band champs, for those of you who were there. On my way to and from work I go past the most amazing azalea bush; so full of almost translucent white star-flowers that it looks like snow. And this is along the highway, mind.
But my favourite is a story-book image: at my grandmother's, I used to read a picture book called Snow White and Rose Red, in which SW and RR lived in a little cottage with their impoverished mother, and they had one red and one white rose bush growing over the door. (They later recreated this horticultural feat on a grander scale when SW married the prince and RR the prince's brother and they went to live in a much-turreted icing-sugar palace). There is a block of flats, also situated on my path to Profitable Employment, which replicates this with camellias on either side of its front gate: those fat, white pearly flowers like gardenias, and the deepest, brightest red camellias I have ever seen. Red like rubies, like blood.

2. Squeaky Shoes
I suffer vastly from squeaky shoes; there are few things worse that walking through a silent library with your feet kicking up a rumpus. So needless to say these delightfully noisy specimens of footwear do not belong to me; they have been seen - and heard! - twice on the feet of a very sweet little fifteen-month-old girl who goes perambulating around the local shops with her grandfather. The first time I experienced this marvel, I initially thought (bird-brain that I have become) that there was a nest of squawking baby birdlets clamouring for food. However, the closer I got, the more I found that the sound rather resembled some psychotic rubber squeaky toy. However, it was eventually traced back to the just-a-hair's-breadth-from-tripping trotting of the aforementioned childer. Put this way, it doesn't sound particularly attractive, but mix in her little red coat and innocent joy in her musical feet, and the benevolent smile of her grandfather, and it was a magic moment - happily repeated the next day!

3. Jessy the Cat
Some of you haven't had the pleasure yet - this is Jess, my cat. And while I haven't only been enjoying her company recently, she is nonetheless a Thing Of Beauty and a Joy Forever, always ready for a scratch under the chin and a nice cosy doze on anything soft and fluffy (preferably my dressing gown). Plus she has a wide range of very distinctive noises which make conversation with her remarkably easy. Examples:
"Feed me!"
"Look! A lizard!"
"Chasing a camellia bud is almost as satisfying as biting your fingers."
"Help! Scary birds!"
"Argh! Scary local cat!"
"I spent all night in that laundry and you can't even pick me up and give me a cuddle?!!!"