Of weather and perfume.

Well we can’t complain that we’ve had no weather can we?  When we were coming up Atherstone locks the other day, queueing for each one, it went a bit like this:

10 am Black skies and a stiff breeze.  Everyone with their rainwear hoods up and backs to the wind.

10.15 am Blue skies, raincoats coming off.

10.25 am Hot sun burning my back through my jumper, so I took that off

10.35 am Black clouds return with a heavy drizzle

and so it went all day.  People were dressing and undressing faster than the cast at a Mikron show.  Fortunately most people saw the funny side of it.  Below the waist, the answer of course is to wear shorts.  Skin seems to be more versatile than any man mad fabric.

If I remember anything from this trip, apart from the weather, it’ll be the olfactory delights.  It has been an unusually scented affair. The frequent wafts of honeysuckle perfume down the canal into Stratford, the scent of lime tree flowers here and there, a surprising stretch of heavy old fashion rose scent from bushes down in Coventry, and of course the odd whiff of paint solvent from car body shops that seem to inhabit canal banks in the urban fringes.  Sadly we fail to catch the perfume of the miles and miles of meadowsweet that line the North Oxford where we are now.  I suppose you need to stick your nose up close to get that.

We dropped off Jacob In Coventry yesterday to get the train home so Kath and I are enjoying our last couple of days on our own before we get back to base.  Our little trip out to Stratford has turned into a tour of a version of the Warwickshire ring with appendages.  By tonight we should be in Braunston, then Crick tomorrow and home to open all the junk mail and attack the lawn- probably needs a scythe by now.