Small Blues and Larger Concerns

The arcane, ever varying delights of the butterfly season never fail. This morning, while the sun still shone, I made my way to the local nature reserve that I once spent a long while failing to find, but which is now so familiar to me that my feet could find their way there unsupervised. As I'd hoped, the Small Blues – tiny, dark and beautifully various – were flying, and in glorious abundance, along with as many Small Coppers as I usually see in a year (so good to see them thriving). Among the vetches and trefoils, copulation thrived – Small Blue copulation, that is.
  But perhaps it is time for me to wrest my attention from butterflies and church monuments and turn it briefly on the wider world... Therese May's tears as she ended her resignation speech were sad to see, but also, I found, acutely, squirmingly embarrassing. You couldn't help feeling sorry for her, but she was completely the victim of her own glaring failings – and even now she doesn't seem to realise it. Much better to leave office, as her predecessor did, with composure and a merry tune on your lips. So much more English.
 And now the long drawn out tedium of a Tory leadership election looms. It's a depressing prospect, not least because so many of the candidates and their backers are bent on one thing above all others – stopping a 'no-deal' Brexit (this is usually code for Brexit). MPs should be reminded that, by voting overwhelmingly to invoke Article 50, they were voting for the possibility of 'no deal', as Article 50 puts a clear time limit (already extended twice) on the process of leaving, regardless of whether a deal has been struck. Perhaps, like all those deluded plebs who voted for Brexit, they didn't know what they were voting for?