The good, the bad and - the beautiful

The good news – well, you know my good news. And the weather has to be the best this year. Cornwall looks breathtakingly beautiful, and on Saturday Moll and I walked down through Mylor Churchyard where a wedding was about to take place. The granite posts had been decorated with bunches of the palest pink and white roses, and pink rosebuds had been tied to each stake on the wrought iron gate at the entrance to the church.

Walking past the wine bar there, we saw a lot of smart bods in morning suits and flowery dresses, huge hats and too high heels. Short haircuts and nervous smiles, braying laughs and posy sun shades. I had to make sure we got back to see the bride, who looked stunningly happy, but appeared to be wearing a long cream sundress. Just as well it was so hot.

The bad news for Himself started with a tummy bug on Friday afternoon. He insisted on taking me to the pub to celebrate but he was very pale and had spent most of the afternoon dashing to the bathroom poor love. We stayed for one drink and came home.

He went to bed early but the tummy bug has persisted all weekend, and the poor darling looks ashen, his voice has become croaky as if through lack of use, and he’s so weak he can hardly walk.

Typically, we have scaffolding going up outside the whole house and Himself and his mate are due to start work on Tuesday to repair large chunks of the top flat, move all the TV aerials and paint the entire frontage. In the state he’s in at the moment it’s as much as he can do to stagger down the corridor. We can only hope that Monday brings an end to it – or at least an improvement.

As for the beautiful? Well, my Moll has had a shower so her coat gleams, her eyelashes sweep majestically down her face in the most artfully coquettish gesture ever – did I tell you how incredibly long her eyelashes are? And apart from the fact that she needs her anal glans done (we won’t go into that right now), she is looking very beautiful.

Perhaps best of all, behind me comes the sweet, heady smell of a bunch of honeysuckle that I picked while walking along the coastal path on Friday afternoon. The lemony fragrance reminds me of an English garden full of the best of flowers: rich, pungent roses with petals like velvet, the fragile scent of sweet peas with their clever pastel shades, and of course my favourite honeysuckle, twisting its way up a warm stone wall.