Throw Open the Windows

I said I'd do the work, and I will... after another five minutes hanging out the window smelling the sweet, sweet smell of summer.

I'm not even kidding. This season seems to get better and better.

I think I've discovered a valid reason for such hot, humid, crummy days. Once evening arrives, the temperature drops from sweltering (international students and foreigners; read "20˚C") to a balmy, cool summer's evening. I'm wearing a clean linen shirt, I've jigged the lock on my window so it opens more than three inches, and the smell of a beautiful summer is rolling in on the breeze.

The wide grass verges between the fields and the roads are covered in fresh mown grass, and daisies are strewn through them like hundreds of white coins, turning their flat little faces towards the sun each day. The buttercups are a marvel here too; almost dripping with their yellow namesake! But the thing I love best about this time of year is the all pervading scent of the grass. This is difficult to describe but impossible to forget once you have smelt it; it's a sweet, delicate scent that drifts with the breeze, and is perhaps most noticeable at the end of a long, sunny day like today. And to compliment this olfactory honey is an aural delight; the evening chorus. Robins, blackbirds, chaffinches and (yes, laugh and get it over with) great tits are lighting up the evening with a spectacular natural concert, their natural brass and woodwind sections a sweet counterpoint to the occasional brash caw from the field crows and harsh noise from the geese.

The geese themselves have subsided slightly of late, less protective now that their goslings are less teacup sized and more bucket sized. The smaller ones should fit my roasting tin nicely in a week or so. I'm joking, of course. You eat goose at Christmas. In other baby animal news, the kittens (baby wabbits to the female occupants of Heronbank and Lakeside) are still diminutively cute, and have begun to stand on the hind legs, ears perked up like ramrods, to nervously survey the passing traffic on the path to campus. This causes an increase in nervousness in itself, as approximately half of said traffic is obsessed with the cute little bunnies, which render themselves cuter by sitting up, yes they do, and oh my gosh wouldn't they be just adorable with little coats on like in Beatrix Potter, they're so sweet, general hushed squee-ing noises etc.. God help the poor little devils if any of the girls actually catch one of them.

If Tyrannosaurus Rex is the King of the dinosaurs, then the Cornish Rex is surely the King o'the Cats.

While I am not a cat person generally, I will admit to a fondness for this breed, due to its name, appearance (the only cat I have ever encountered that appears to be a combination of sparse iron wool and a huge pair of ears), attitude (bizarrely playful, extremely curious and oddly intelligent by all accounts) and also the fact that it's curly haired, crazy whiskered, twisty appearance appears to be due to a genetic mutation resulting from radiation from Cornish tin mines. That's right. This cat is a superhero.

Anyway, it is now well and truly dusk, so I pull my window not quite closed, hang up my blogging hat for now and bid you all bonsoir. I swear, that materials science textbook is glaring at me.

Ed.