To make use of our last bit of hire car, we went up to Douglas Head on Friday 1 May to see the sun rise... It did not disappoint:



And then we walked along the prom in the golden glow from the east:




Saturday was boot-buying day. And on the way to the boot shop, we passed this:


The slightly quaint term "playing fields" brought all sorts of things to mind:

Henry Newbolt's Vitai Lampada, for example: "Play up! play up! and play the game!" (And if your school Latin makes you wonder why "the torch of life" is "vitai lampada" and not "vitae lampada", then here is your answer.)

Playing fields also made me think of Rupert Brooke: "Yet stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?" (There's an explanation of the whole thing here.)

These are both pre-WWI poems, but I think they were at the forefront of my mind because I'm doing a group read of Pat Barker's Regeneration with Simon Haisell...

Anyway, I'm digressing into Velvet Cushion territory, so I'll move on.

On Monday 4, we had dinner with friends at Just Pizza and Pasta on North Quay:



I picked the nduja pizza, purely because I'd been hearing about this substance on MasterChef, and had never had it. Turns out it's a deliciously spicy and spreadable pork sausage. The heat comes from Calabrian chillies, and the name probably derives from the French product called andouille (because of the influence of the Angevins, who were the rules of Calabria in the 13th century).

Meanwhile, now that we're into summer, even more flowers and leaves are appearing.

This is the laurel bush in our front garden:



And we're now in the season of wisteria and lilac:


We used to have lilac in our garden in Dorchester, back in the 1990s. They were always beautiful:



In fact, they were one of the things I dreaded missing if -- when -- we left. How long ago that seems...