Creeping In for the Summer Reading Challenge plus Summer of Sport Update.

 Allowed  into my 'not really a challenge' due to it's subtitle was this.....

Murder By The Seaside - Ten Classic Crime Stories for Summer. Edited by Cecily Gayford.

10 short stories by several well known crime writers from the past, including Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, Michael Innes and Gladys Mitchell.

They are all set in summer, from an impossible murder on the Cornish coast to an odd honeymoon story.

A quick read for my 4th Reading The Seasons Summer Book.

The opening day of Wimbledon on Monday and it was fine all day so lots of matches finished. Emma Raducano won in straight sets as did defending Champion Carlos Alcaraz. British Men with wild cards got knocked out as did Heather Watson but 2 British women who I can't remember hearing about before got through the first round.

Tuesday and not at all summery - cold and cloudy - but lots more British wild card entry men playing although Andy M was originally scheduled to play he pulled out during the morning. More of the British men wild cards were knocked out but Cam Norrie won in 3 sets and later into the evening Jack Draper had a 5 set tough game but managed to beat the Swedish Number one and that meant that Jack and Cam play each other on Thursday.......... guaranteeing a Brit in the third round....good news. 

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Sue

The Beans That Nearly Got Away + S.O.S. 2024

 The climbing French Beans didn't do much climbing for weeks. I'd surrounded the tripod with fences to keep out next door neighbours cat and didn't notice that right at the bottom, only just a little way up the canes some beans had formed. 

Luckily I moved the fences away to do some weeding and discovered all these...........

Very good they were too.

I'm watering regularly now after no rain for a week and the plants are climbing well at last. Hopeful for more to come soon.

S.O.S. 2024 isn't a cry for help! But Summer of Sport. The last one was 2021, when all the things cancelled the year before because of Covid, were held. That year, like this year I loved all the tennis and Olympics and wrote about them on the blog starting with the French Open. I looked back at those old posts and saw that Jack Draper - a young unknown Brit had a wild card entry into Queens Club and had a win against Jannik Sinner. 3 Years on and Jack did really well at Queens Club is now seeded 28 at Wimbledon and Jannik is seeded number 1 this year, above moany Djocovic and last years winner Alcaraz. 

This year so far  the French Open was followed by the first grass court tournament of the season from Nottingham then Queens Club tournament , Wimbledon Qualifiers and now Wimbledon. And at the weekend the British Athletic Championships were on TV to watch, with many up and coming athletes trying to qualify for the Olympics.

 I've just labelled some of my posts mentioning tennis with 'Summer of Sport 2024',  so that in 2028 - the next Olympic Year  - if I'm still about! - I'll be able to look back and see what was going on.

A memory.............

At 2pm on a Monday afternoon in late June or early July 1980 I settled the 2 month old baby down and settled myself down, excited for my first ever time at home to watch the start of Wimbledon live.......it Rained! - there was no play - nothing to watch!

Now it no longer matters, with two courts having roofs there is always something to see and a huge choice of what to watch via BBC Red Button.

Just proves that not everything has got worse in the intervening 44 years! 

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Sue

PS for Euros Football and Tour De France commentary see Rachel in Norfolk's Blog! 

And another PS Thanks to Aril for reminding me about the Paul Heaton set from Glastonbury - so good.

JULY COUNTRY DAYS

Illustration by Eugene Grasset from the Illuminated Book Of Days edited by K and M Lee

Julius Caesar the Roman Dictator who reformed the calendar in 46 BC named the month after himself, he was killed in the Ides Of March so that he couldn't proclaim himself Emperor.  July often contains some good hot days sometimes referred to as Dog Days. At this time of year Sirius, the dog star, rises at the same time as the sun and was thought by the  Romans to give the sun extra heat. The Dog Days are from July 3rd until August 11th .

JULY 

My emblem is the Lion, and I breathe

  The breath of Libyan deserts o'er the land;

My sickle as a sabre I unsheathe,

  And bent before me the pale harvests stand.

The lakes and rivers shrink at my command,

  And there is thirst and fever in the air;

The sky is changed to brass, the earth to sand;

  I am the Emperor whose name I bear.  

Longfellow -  The Poets Calendar

Anglo-Saxon names for the month are Heymonath for haymaking or Meadmonath meaning flowering of the meadows. The full moon in July is called the Wyrt moon or Mead moon . Wyrt is an old English name for herbs and July was the traditional time for taking the first honey from the hive and making mead. 

The main date in July that people associate with weather rhymes is St Swithin's day on the 15th, although there is no record  of this day ever being followed by 40 days of rain even if it pours on the 15th, the average is 17 days with rain.

If St Swithin weep, that year, the proverb say

The weather will be foul for forty days

This old saying covers all eventualities...

If about St Swithin Day a change of weather takes place,

                                         we are likely to have a spell of fine or wet weather

There was also a belief about the ripening of apples. It was thought that if it rained on the 15th the Saint was christening the apples and there would be a good harvest. In many areas no one would eat an apple before this day but after the 15th windfall apples could be used for jam making.

'Til St Swithin's Day be past

Apples be not fit to taste 

Here in Suffolk our one week of Summer was last week and now we are back to cloudy and several degrees cooler.

(I caught up with the Cold Play set from Glastonbury on TV last night - how brilliant it was. Somehow listening to good music has disappeared from my life in the last six years. I've still got some favourite CDs - Divine Comedy, Chris Difford, Robbie Williams, Josh Groban and some Brass band stuff - just need to watch less TV!)

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Sue