Birthday blues

When it comes to butterflies, blue is the colour

- Val Bourne

YESTERDAY was my birthday, and the Best Beloved and I have a tradition. We take a homemade cheese and pickle sandwich, plus a flask of tea, and set off on our annual chalk hill blue butterfly hunt. We know how to live! Sometimes the weather is perfect, being sunny and warm, and on occasion we have seen a veritable snowstorm of chalk hill blue butterflies floating above the colourful limestone flora. In other years it’s been wet, cold or grey, and sometimes all three at once. After all, this is England.

Butterflies only fly in clement, warm weather, due to their delicate wings. They hunker down in bad weather, so some years we’ll only spot one or two. Nevertheless, we always spend a couple of hours on that hill close to Stroud in Gloucestershire. The same seat, the same sandwich – just another year on.