After months of relentless rain and wind, today London felt suddenly and inexorably whalloped over the head by spring. Complete with Disney-style stars and birds orbiting its head.
Our garden has gone ballistic with spring bulbs. Normally for every ten bulbs I plant in the autumn, the squirrels extract a tithe of about nine. Perhaps they were distracted this year trying to break into Richard’s ever-more-complicated bird feeder defense system, but for whatever reason, we’ve got dozens of blooms brightening the muddy-green lawn, and many more shoots pushing through the rain-softened earth awaiting their turn.
As we walked Joshua in the park this morning, we heard an unusual birdcall: definitely tit-like, but not the Peter-peter or Knee-deep, knee-deep of a great tit nor the more complicated CHEE-chee-chee bee-dee-dee-dee-dee of the blue tit. It was more like TEA-for me, TEA-for-me, TEA-for-me: plaintive, insistent, seeking.
The culprit was a blue tit, high up in an ash tree giving it his all, with the message, I imagine, roughly translating as, Fancy a shag? Fancy a shag? Fancy a shag?
I think it’s wonderful that after so many years, a blue tit can still surprise me.
Just got home from being taken for a walk with the Canes croxorum – needed to clear my head after a gig last night – and I noticed loads of crocuses coming up, and plenty of birdsong. I love this time of year – the optimism of Spring promised with none of the disappointment of arriving home to find that someone tried to deliver it while I was out and has taken it to some remote depot.
Or worse, delivered it to the crack-smoking neighbours and their pit bull next door.
I spent a lot of time pushing the pram to the remote depot over maternity leave. Because even though I was home full time, the postman only ever stopped by during the very few times I left the house. I got to enjoy it after a while – a nice long walk for something so pointless.
Not long after one of our house moves I got one of those notes, something delivered to an office on some distant industrial estate. I was so preoccupied working out how to get there (it was much further than practical pram pushing distance) that I paid much less attention to the requiremenmts for claiming the parcel, such as demonstrating I.D. So, I got to the office, presented the delivery card and the passport I’d grabbed as I was leaving.
“You’ve changed a lot since this picture was taken,” said the clerk.
It turned out I’d taken Mrs Crox’s passport.
Your part of London is slightly ahead of mine. Most of my pulmonaria is already in flower, but my narcissi are still in bud. At least I have the joy of watching the wild birds in the garden; yesterday I saw a greater spotted woodpecker. Usually I see it when it comes to my peanut pecker in mid-winter, but yesterday it was having a peck at the trunk of one of my apple trees.
In my continuing battle with the tree rats, I bought a bird feeding station and greased the metal shaft with petroleum jelly. It is quite fun to watch a squirrel trying to climb it and sliding back down.