August 3 - Day 108 - ‘And in my flower-beds, I think, Smile the carnation and the pink; And down the borders, well I know, The poppy and the pansy blow.' Rupert Brooke

I realise that I have included wildflowers two days running but I couldn’t resist this picture and the quotation. I was trying to get the picture of the poppy, that was the only one growing out of a dry stone wall, from a different angle. Unfortunately, as I manoeuvred around my bike at the edge of the road, I stepped back and flattened it (the poppy that is - not my bike). Feeling rather guilty, I quickly put my camera away and headed to work for Day 2 of the centre opening more fully.

The title quotation comes from the poem ‘Grantchester’. On this day in 1887, the writer of Grantchester Rupert Brooke was born, best known for his First World war poems, particularly, ' The Soldier' that starts, 'If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is forever England.' As a poet, he gained praise, with his collection of poems outselling most others at the time, reaching its 24th reprint by 1918. He was, however, also heavily criticised at the time for writing poetry that was naïve and over-sentimental.

Brooke only lived to the age of 27. Given the number of bites I seem to have received recently on the way to and from work (you see I don’t just swallow flies, I seem to provide them with a meal as well) , I was a little disturbed to read that he died from blood poisoning after an insect bite. I had strangely somehow thought he’d been killed during the war.

So that I end on a positive, which this week definitely feels, with clients happy that they can come to St Wilfrid’s Centre throughout the day, I thought I’d include a quotation from another of Brooke’s poems. It’s often forgotten that he wrote many love poems as well as those about war - and a bit of sentimentality within a love poem is fine by me. 'I'll break and forge the stars anew, Shatter the heavens with a song; Immortal in my love for you, Because I love you, very strong.’