HIGH SUMMER ROLLIN...

Hardcore evening gardening once the heat has subsided; finally taming a thorny, unruly beast of a plant into submission - it fought back, I won - sustaining scrapes, cuts and scratches all over. Bonus baby fox cub watching at dusk, dusk stretching into hours. The cuts and scratches on slowly tanned limbs are joined by bites and bruises, scuffed feet and elbows like those of a child: side effects of scampering around at the lido, where we go to swim every day as if it's our day job. They know us there now, know our spot, our habits. We know the swans, the duckling adopted by geese, the other regulars, the daytrippers, the boat man, and a host of other characters. One scalding day we're treated to the Rolling Stones sound checking for their concert that weekend - standing on the shore in wet swimsuits, with dumb luck grins, sun blazing, live Mick hurtling across the soft water: "...never stop, never stop, never stop. You, you, you, you make a grown man cryyyyy".