cuckoo

half past eight,I'm watering a few tubs and suddenly life changes gear.Close by, maybe in a tree, I hear my first cuckoo for two years. And there's no mistaking the sound. It is irristible.If I were a female cuckoo, I'd drop everything and follow the call.Thrilled with my connection to the life force and thinking of the happy conjunction of the cuckoo and the swallows now crowding the skies, I retire to breakfast and a little lie down before the day takes off.
On the radio Fi Glover is doing her thing and Alvin Stardust, a name I vaguely remember from my racketty past, are excavating his past when as the sig tune comes closer I hear Fi say,as if she had just invented the phrase, that something "would not happen anytime soon".
Oh Fi - how could you. Any Time Soon, indeed. If there's an overused catchphrase that gets right up my jacksy it this terrible overused three words. God, it gets to me. What's wrong with"don't hold your breath" as a way to indicate the likelihood of delay. That at least has some wit about it. But " any time soon"! I'd be prepared to lay money on it being American in origin. When I was a kid you might be told to "hold your whist".And you knew exactly where you were.
If there are any more sloppy incursions from America, I may be forced to write to the B.B.C.
I had a German here this afternoon. He's a man who can turn his hand to anything - but it turns out, not to-day. He's about to turn the chaotic rear of my house into an ordered arrangement of raised beds in which I intend to plant amazing combinations of " stuff". He arrived with a measuring tape. I wouldn't be surprised if he even had a spirit level handy., His conversation consisted of details of how my plans might actually be turned into reality. I was almost speechless with admiration. And then he said he'd be starting sometime next week. Shit. This fella has been in Ireland for a long time. I fear he may have been here too long.