My ballerina tulips make their final curtain call as summer arrives in my Lewes garden.

There is a glorious melancholy about a hot day in England’s late spring. The final glory of exquisitely delicate tulips has a special beauty and so it was yesterday when I watched the farewell performance of my Ballerina tulips iridescent in the sunshine but all too obviously opening their petals for the last time. Spring is making way for summer in my Lewes garden and the roses have begun to bloom but, before I can celebrate their arrival, I must bid farewell to the Ballerinas.

While I am still studying my musical year of 1886, what better way of marking the passing of my Ballerina tulips that with the best known piece from Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals, written that year. I mean, of course, the Swan – that beautiful cello solo know mostly thought of as The Dying Swan. Here is Uliana Lopatkina dying with the same grace as my tulip flowers:

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STEPHEN DEARSLEY’S SUMMER OF LOVE BY COLIN BELL

My novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, was published on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.