The privet is just coming in to flower, its ice cream coloured, Christmas tree sprays of trumpet-shaped blooms filling the air with memories. When I was growing up, every terraced house was fronted with a low wall topped with railings, behind which unruly hedges of hardy privet bullied their way towards the pavement. Hedge shears were borrowed between neighbours, but not often. It was a job done reluctantly at the end of the summer holidays, sometimes for bob-a-job week. It was scary, struggling to wield the stiff, sometimes blunt over-sized scissors, balancing between the bay window, the airy (the barred, gaping hole over the cellar) and the sturdy hedge. Then, trimming achieved, there was still the tidying up, brushing the bits in to a bucket before being emptied in to the dust bin which lived in the back yard. Several journeys had to be made, back and forth round the houses and along the entry to the back gate, wedged ajar with the metal bin and its clanging lid.
The entry was a playground in itself. A narrow, straight space to practise roller-skating, arms spread out to touch blackened walls, desperate to stay upright (I failed - any kind of skating seemed beyond me). Its deep doorways were common hiding places in hide-and-seek as they were often draped with trailing ivy, sometimes crawling with thick, dark, hairy caterpillars. An absence of grown-ups in this 'behind' space, meant it was ideal as a race track. One friend had a faded pink pedal-car, so of course it was adopted by all, to be used by all, all at the same time. Some pushed, some pulled, the rest climbed in and on, until little pinkness was visible. The inevitable shouting, laughter and enthusiasm usually ended in tears, arguments and scabby knees.
Do children today still compare scabby knees in the playground? Do dark hairy caterpillars still inhabit curtains of ivy? There are lots of black and yellow stripy ones eating their way through my nasturtiums
and a huge black and yellow dragonfly spent two days zooming round the garden.
Little privet though and no bob-a-job. Hedges are now mostly beech, escallonia, leylandii, berberis and tidied regularly by adults with electric machines. No longer scary.
Sign of the times, I guess.
ps Have discovered my caterpillars are from the boring cabbage white butterfly and I suspect the dragonfly is similarly common - but who cares.
This bee was found on the ground - might be sleeping, maybe dead?
Or perhaps it just fell out of the hive.
