The rooks are raucous today in the trees opposite the farm. I can hear their constant squawking all the way up the path past the tennis court and to the top field. The hawthorn trees along Holden’s Way are suddenly snowy now with their little star shaped flowers. Their petals dot the path like confetti.
The wind whispers through the bare branches of the oak trees at May Tree House. It still feels icy even though daffodils are now well and truly out. Great masses of cloud move to the south forming, overlapping and reforming with each other.
I’ve left Andy, a quiet man from Bridgwater, to fit the smart meter at the cottage. I last saw him in his van puffing on his umpteenth rollie of the morning.
The entry I’ve just read in ‘Next to Nature’ Ronnie describes a day in March when spring suddenly bursts forth at Bottengoms. It’s often the birds who herald it. ‘There was an exultant calling from bare trees’ is how Ronnie puts it. We’re not there yet. When, I wonder. I long for that day like waiting for a long lost lover to return from a place far from home.
The telegraph poles are in their perpetual march in single file west over the hill towards the sunlit Blackdowns. I always imagine them linking in a line all the way west down to Land’s End although I expect they peter out somewhere over the hill.
I pass a woman listening to a pop tune on her phone who has to keep on calling for Henry who is lagging behind sniffing about on the side of the field. He is a wiry terrier of some kind. He sniffs me briefly and then decides to catch her up.
I can see Jane’s gardener hunched over in her front lawn at Windmill Cotrage. He’s significantly younger than her but still must be approaching eighty. What do I know about age? Or any of us for that matter. It’s just something that happens to us. When spring arrives or really feels like it it will be me that sings exultantly from the bare trees and I hope to record it here.
The Slow Walker 