A much deserved win.
Which, incidentally, means that there are now 10 countries who have won a major international football tournament since England last did it. Germany, Italy and Brazil have won 10 between them in that period.
» Winners Spain, uploaded to Flickr by mwboeckmann and used under a CC by-nc-sa licence.
I have returned. Not that I went very far: my sister lured me to Hampshire with the promise of glow-worms. Wikipedia tells me that the glow worm we have in the UK is a species of firefly, but they don’t fly, or flash; the females are wingless, and sit in the grass glowing to attract the flying males.
I suppose if you live somewhere where the fireflies are a bit more spectacular, the glow worm might seem a bit underwhelming, but they are what we have and I’ve never seen them before, so I was very pleased. This is Andrew Marvell, and one of my favourite poems:
The Mower to the Glow-worms
Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late,
And studying all the summer night,
Her matchless songs does meditate;Ye county comets, that portend
No war nor prince’s funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Than to presage the grass’s fall;Ye glow-worms, whose officious flame
To wand’ring mowers shows the way,
That in the night have lost their aim,
And after foolish fires do stray;Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
Since Juliana here is come,
For she my mind hath so displac’d
That I shall never find my home.
We also went for a couple of nice walks; lots of butterflies, lots of flowers, woodlark, stonechat, a pair of peregrines. And at Mottisfont Abbey, this moth, a Scarlet Tiger. So it was a very satisfactory trip all round.
I noticed the cat poking at something on the lawn and went to have a look — at first I thought it was a little beetle, but on closer examination it turned out to be a very tiny-weeny frog.
And once I’d seen one, I realised they were all over the place: perhaps like flying ants, there’s a specific combination of temperature, humidity and so on that triggers them to all come out of the pond and disperse.
I’ve posted more photos of tiny frogs to Flickr here. Oh, and if you’re wondering about the nail varnish: that’s not my hand.