No, Sandra; my grandfather came back from the war on a stretcher, having been run over by a lorry in the blackout, so I never knew him before he was an invalid. The hospitals he was in at first didn’t mind little kids, so we were marched into various veterans’ pavilions from an early age. By the time Himself was admitted to the hospital with the wild strawberries, however, he was also blind from glaucoma, so there was no waving out the window.

It’s almost peach season in Ontario. I could eat peaches three times a day, every day, throughout August — but I have to get them at the farmers’ market. Peaches from Sobey’s are too likely to have been picked green and sort-of-ripened in those dreaded plastic boxes, so their texture is compromised and their flavour is about half what it should be.

It is my great privilege to have a friend with two Red Haven peach trees in her garden. Earth has not anything to show more fair!