Travels and flowers

Oh dear. My attempts to avoid budget airlines and becoming more-carbonly-neutral do not seem to be working out quite as planned this summer, partially because many of our favourite people live away (and my favourite band released teasing European dates without English dates...)

J's best friend Phil has been living in Delft for the last year or so. We've been over to see him once, and saw him again at a Belgian festival last summer. Phil's also made it over here a couple of times - but not nearly as often as we'd like to see him. After much discussion we're going over for the weekend in mid-July, and I thought I'd try and see what the trains were like. Unfortunately - woeful. The journey times (even taking into account getting to/from airports at either end) are twice as long, and cost twice as much. It appears impossible to travel by train between London and Rotterdam without taking out a small mortgage, so VLM it is. I can't wait to see Rotterdam, too - apparently it's even prettier that Delft, which has already stolen my heart as one of the loveliest Dutch cities. The picture on the left wasn't taken wonkily - the church really does lean over to a disturbing degree.


We had such a good time the last time (even if we did end up looking like this by the end of the evening after one too many extremely strong Dutch beers) that it wouldn't feel like summer really without a trip over to say hello and see Phil and his partner Janneke's new place.

On the home front, the garden is changing daily as more and more of the climbers and pots start to flower. The mysterious plant Anne gave me (and swore was very pretty) has now flowered. I'm still not sure what it's called, but look: purple and gorgeous! The first three to blossom are the first of many, too, if the buds do what they look as if they will (and the slimy beasts don't get there first). The daisies are also going great guns; this happened after a little bit of deadheading whilst having a cigarette a couple of afternoons ago. The only thing I'm unsure about is the shocking pink geranium... it didn't look like this in the garden centre, honest...