This title might conjure up the idea of gossip or salacious bedtime conversations. However, it is also the name of a particular kind of peony. In the garden where we live there are several clumps of this variety and in mid-May I am waiting for the copious buds to break into bloom. They are large and richly coloured flowers – pink meringues that dominate the herbaceous borders for a brief time and make for glorious arrangements in the fireplaces. The vitality of summer prefigured in a vase.

Along with the return of swifts to York in the past two weeks, the early signs of summer are gathering apace. The clear skies, longer daylight, and warm sunshine of recent days, add to the sense of the year’s turn. Already we have put out our garden sofa-swing. An extravagant purchase a couple of decades ago, but one that continues to provide enjoyment across the warmer months. Its comfort and gentle rocking often having the desired effect of inducing an afternoon snooze.

This year the English garden sofa-swing is celebrating its centenary, and a contemporary version of the rocker will be exhibited at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show later this week. It is often regarded as an example of English eccentricity – a bit of living room set in the outdoors. While I don’t go back anywhere near as far as the first appearance of this kind of garden furniture, one did feature very early in my childhood. My maternal grandmother was a fan of colour film for slides and I have some of her collection. (Bessie liked taking pictures of buildings that were about to disappear – including the dramatic demolition of mill chimneys in her native Lancashire).

This photograph was taken in 1966. Judging by the blossom behind the swing it may well have been the first May Bank Holiday weekend. The UK enjoyed some early heat in the first couple of days of the month in that year. I am the cheeky chap looking at the camera, slightly blurred by a sudden movement, and my brother is beside me. The company whose sofa-swing will be exhibited at Chelsea asked for customers’ photographs of historic examples to include in the display. Who knows, we might feature!

Part of my affection for the sofa-swing is connected with a childhood often overshadowed by illness. I had debilitating asthma throughout my pre-teen years, often missing school and struggling for breath. Lying on the swing in my grandparents’ garden, shielded from the sun and gently rocking, gave both comfort and relief. It was – and is – very soothing. As I lie on it today, gazing across at the pillow talk and listening to the plaintive call of a wood pigeon, I am reminded of the opening scene in A Portrait of a Lady, and Henry James’s paean to summer in an English garden:

“Real dusk would not arrive for many hours; but the flood of summer light had begun to ebb, the air had grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense turf. They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed that sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source of one’s enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. From five o’clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity”