According to my weather app. he first day of June in Carlisle is much a muchness with the first day of June in Genova with the exception that in Carlisle it is not raining.
So there's a surprise.
So because it is only a degree colder and in fact drier I ventured into the garden which has been totally neglected whilst we were in Genova.
Everything was caught up in a horrible tangle of Nettles, Bindweed and Ground Elder.
Apparently Ground Elder was brought here by the Romans as a Salad Plant. But it is a vicious plant that develops by sending out roots which dig deeply under the soil and rapidly colonise a garden, especially if you have abandoned it to nature and headed off to Italy for two months.
So we returned, like the ancient Britons we are, to a Roman Occupation.
I hate gardening. I say that so there can be no argument. In fact I promised myself that when I retired I would write a book called The One day a Year Gardener.
Ground Elder put an end to that project and a book called the One day a Week Gardener sounds pretty average and as though you will not learn too much by buying and reading it.
But there it is the real, historical legacy of the first European Union. Weeds that can't be controlled.
Unless you count the roads and the language.
All in all the British have not been too keen on thinking of themselves as European.
I saw a sticker in a car window this morning saying, Love Europe but not the EU.
In fact when I was a vicar in Manchester the richest man in the parish retired, he owned the local Fish and Chip shop, and decided to go on a cruise.
When I visited him I expressed enthusiasm for the trip he was planning, never having been abroad myself, but he was not that enthusiastic explaining that it was 'the wife's' idea. He said that he had once been on a 'foreign' holiday, a week in a Belgium Holiday Camp. He said that on the ferry on the way home the whole family agreed that they hadn't enjoyed the holiday at all.
'I thought', he said, 'If that's abroad, you can keep it'.
I must admit thinking once or twice this morning that I wished that the Romans had kept their Ground Elder to themselves.
We enjoyed our time in Genova, by the end of May we had spent three months in Genova and only two in England.
There is much to enjoy about being 'abroad', the language, the cafe culture, the weather, caffe corretto and long, very civilised lunches amongst them.
Now it seems, that with the exception of France, another thing to enjoy will be alternative energy.
Apparently, because of the Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan, the Germans are about to close down their Nuclear Plants and invest in alternative energy, the French will soon be the major nuclear power in Europe producing most of, if not all, the Nuclear Energy.
The German decision is not entirely about managing risk, it is also about holding onto power as Angela Merkel seeks to form a new stronger co-alition with the Greens.
In a couple of months we are off to spend a few weeks in another hot bed of alternative energy, Scotland, where Hydro-Electricity and the Hebridean Wind Farms produce clean energy.
It will be interesting to see how, as the impact of the German decision is felt, whether clean energy strengthens the campaign for Scottish independence and whether Scotland then joins the EU and the impact that will have on English energy security.
We may even be grateful to those first European settlers, the Romans, when we sit down to a cold plate of Ground Elder Salad.
So there's a surprise.
So because it is only a degree colder and in fact drier I ventured into the garden which has been totally neglected whilst we were in Genova.
Everything was caught up in a horrible tangle of Nettles, Bindweed and Ground Elder.
Apparently Ground Elder was brought here by the Romans as a Salad Plant. But it is a vicious plant that develops by sending out roots which dig deeply under the soil and rapidly colonise a garden, especially if you have abandoned it to nature and headed off to Italy for two months.
So we returned, like the ancient Britons we are, to a Roman Occupation.
I hate gardening. I say that so there can be no argument. In fact I promised myself that when I retired I would write a book called The One day a Year Gardener.
Ground Elder put an end to that project and a book called the One day a Week Gardener sounds pretty average and as though you will not learn too much by buying and reading it.
But there it is the real, historical legacy of the first European Union. Weeds that can't be controlled.
Unless you count the roads and the language.
All in all the British have not been too keen on thinking of themselves as European.
I saw a sticker in a car window this morning saying, Love Europe but not the EU.
In fact when I was a vicar in Manchester the richest man in the parish retired, he owned the local Fish and Chip shop, and decided to go on a cruise.
When I visited him I expressed enthusiasm for the trip he was planning, never having been abroad myself, but he was not that enthusiastic explaining that it was 'the wife's' idea. He said that he had once been on a 'foreign' holiday, a week in a Belgium Holiday Camp. He said that on the ferry on the way home the whole family agreed that they hadn't enjoyed the holiday at all.
'I thought', he said, 'If that's abroad, you can keep it'.
I must admit thinking once or twice this morning that I wished that the Romans had kept their Ground Elder to themselves.
We enjoyed our time in Genova, by the end of May we had spent three months in Genova and only two in England.
There is much to enjoy about being 'abroad', the language, the cafe culture, the weather, caffe corretto and long, very civilised lunches amongst them.
Now it seems, that with the exception of France, another thing to enjoy will be alternative energy.
Apparently, because of the Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan, the Germans are about to close down their Nuclear Plants and invest in alternative energy, the French will soon be the major nuclear power in Europe producing most of, if not all, the Nuclear Energy.
The German decision is not entirely about managing risk, it is also about holding onto power as Angela Merkel seeks to form a new stronger co-alition with the Greens.
In a couple of months we are off to spend a few weeks in another hot bed of alternative energy, Scotland, where Hydro-Electricity and the Hebridean Wind Farms produce clean energy.
It will be interesting to see how, as the impact of the German decision is felt, whether clean energy strengthens the campaign for Scottish independence and whether Scotland then joins the EU and the impact that will have on English energy security.
We may even be grateful to those first European settlers, the Romans, when we sit down to a cold plate of Ground Elder Salad.
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