Where Did The Time Go?

Old, old friends. They see each other once or twice a year, and they pick up right where they left off.

What happened to the Easter days? They ran by as if they were late for an appointment.

I kept thinking: I must send them a postcard. By ‘them’ I mean you, my Dear Reader. I wanted to tell you about how the daffodils suddenly came out, all in a gang, and how the niece said it was like getting a second spring, because the daffs are over in the south. (I think, suddenly, are daffodils a very British thing? Do you have them in Montana or Florida or just outside Seattle? Do they flourish anywhere in Australia or New Zealand? Anyway, they strike the clock for us. We know it is spring when the brave yellow daffodils lift their lovely heads.)

The daffodils never look as ravishing on the camera as they do in life. You have to magnify this in your mind by about seven.

I kept thinking that I wanted to tell you about the sound of the woodpeckers and the wood pigeons and the bright flash of the first pied wagtail - at least, I’m almost sure it was a wagtail - and the enchanting pair of ducks who are swimming up and down the burn, ready for the nesting season.

The bird life in general is a thing to behold. Our sweet Clova, the little grey Connemara, has been sleeping a lot in the sunshine and she has two guardian crows who come and rest on her quarters when she is lying down. I think they are pulling out tufts of her shedding winter hair to take away to their nests. I am always seeing them flying off to the big meadow with little packets of something in their beaks. The great-nephew thinks they are removing parasites and ticks and things. ‘Oh,’ I said, very excited, when he told me this, ‘I know what that is. That has a name.’

‘Yes,’ he said staunchly. ‘It does. It’s called symbiotic.’

I looked at him in some astonishment.

‘You are ten years old,’ I said. ‘How do you know that?’

‘I know quite a lot of things,’ he said.

I wanted to tell you about the moment he arrived and the red mare saw him and she went all soft, as if memories of love were flowing through her. They do say horses never forget, but she only sees him once or twice a year and he’s always growing so it does seem slightly amazing to me that he just has to arrive and she’s all blinky and dreamy.

I wanted to write down the moment that some unexpected guests arrived at the field and the sun was beaming away and I got out the massage table and put them on and let the red mare cast her spells over them. (She very gently leans her nose on their arm or leg and she goes into a kind of Zen trance and she breathes and breathes and everyone feels the love and peace like someone has spread a cloak or turned on the lights. I mean real, actual feeling. It makes me laugh, because I’m quite a rationalist really, and this is a mystery I cannot quite explain or put into the words. After five minutes of this they get up with a gleam all over their face and say something like, ‘It feels like I’ve had a full massage treatment for an hour.’ I should really rent her out and we could make a fortune and retire.)

I am almost certainly making it up in my head but I think she does look very pleased with her excellent work.

All these things I wanted to tell you and the days went shooting past and there were some ups and downs - because oh, the news, and oh, the world - and suddenly it was twelve days or something and I am sorry.

I said to my friend Kathy in Wales this morning that I think people are yearning for simple, plain, human stories. I am, at least. I want to write simple, plain, human stories but of course those are the hardest things to write. Weirdly, it’s much easier to write the fancy pants.

But I think the collective heart needs the very simple, just now.

Perhaps it always did.