From Russia with Love

Now, it may be, as the age old adage would suggest, that we beware of the Greeks bearing gifts. But this should not, as recent experience so richly demonstrated, apply to the Russians.

Last Sunday my two young Russian friends, N and K, came to lunch. Or, to be truthful, they might have been invited for afternoon tea for, as always, and I have come to expect nothing different from them, they arrived late. And by late, I mean late, the sausages in roasted root vegetables prepared by Mrs. N having been nicely burnt to a cinder. However, any annoyance I might have felt was immediately dispelled for they presented themselves at the hall door swathed in armfuls of the most wonderful white lilies, a myriad of palest buds, tinged apple green, peeking through layers of crunchy, clear cellophane.

As I write the lilies, placed in tall glass vases, are slowly opening to fill the drawing room with the most heaven sent fragrance, an on-going reminder of a happy day spent in N and K's company. Indeed, it was particularly good to see them for, most sadly, I was unable to attend their recent September wedding held far from Moscow or London in the remote Provence countryside of southern France.

But this is to digress from my subject of lilies. Or rather, lilies as cut flowers. Just prior to the visit of the Russian delegation I found myself in Petworth, West Sussex, for the afternoon which, as many will know, is renowned first for the eponymous house, home to the Seventh Baron Leconfield but now owned by the National Trust, and secondly for its remarkable collection of antique shops.

In one of these, Brownrigg, if names are to be named, my attention was immediately taken with not one, but possibly five or more, large containers into which stem after stem of pure white Asiatic lilies soared upwards in ethereal beauty. Such style, and in danger of eclipsing the beautifully presented range of eclectic furniture and decorative items with which this shop is filled.

P.S. My picture shows my dear Russian friends, N and K, arriving somewhat unusually for the marriage ceremony on what I believe are called 'Segways', motorised wheels. N carries a bouquet of red roses to complement K's cravat.