Blowing eyelashes around chives and apparent memories

When the alium globes fill out their purple potential and the chive buds seem almost to flower, Margaret finds herself unable to prevent the urge to whoop and whing beside the bumble bees. It's a spectacle I love to observe, like a spring rite, an awakening of her natural soul.

Bessy, on the other hand, recalls that in the dying days of the previous year she buried the memory of a dormant dream somewhere that happens to be - as far as she recalls - beneath the chives. Which is why they always seem almost to flower.

George never did flower, according to his closest friends, so George tells me. Today his lashes were made up but not made up, or something I couldn't quite get to grips with. He let me know that there were days in his youth when he blew rings of eyelashes across lonely cafes and embraced the world in love. I said this sounded wonderful but he retorted that it wasn't about sounding but about seeing and being and loving. The conversation ended.

Cookie was apparently not apparent and so I didn't greet her. Don't ask me why we do this, but there are days when we're each invisible to the other. It makes for interesting dentistry as instruments pass about and teeth are filled without either the dentist or nurse being present. God only knows whether the patient is there or not.

Which makes one wonder if - like chives dug up by dogs - everything is just about to happen, but doesn't quite. Perhaps I ought just to humm and buzz and enjoy what is about to happen, just in case it doesn't.