Tooth of the lion

It is dandelion season. They cluster along the edges of roadsides and take over patches of waste ground. They push up from cracks in the pavement and squat in gutters. While the daffodils are withered and brown and the white dead nettle too subtle to compete, it is the dandelions, with their extrovert yellow, that steal the glory.

It was in the 1500s that they became associated with the lion, their jagged leaves giving them the name of lion’s tooth, or dent-de-lion. But their rich colour is also reminiscent of the sun, ruler of Leo, the astrological lion. Today, they have lost any regal associations and are seen as nothing but a weed, inconvenient or despised, depending on your point of view. Yet a field of dandelions is easily as beautiful as one of more well-regarded wildflowers.

When you live in a town, you find the wild where you can. Not just in the obvious parks and squares, but in the edges, the forgotten corners and in the overlooked plants. Since lockdown, when the weeds were given free rein to grow where they might, there seem to be more of them. Weeds have always found enterprising spaces, but they have had a little freedom and are taking advantage of it.

I delight in the dandelions’ beauty in the urban wild, but in the yard, I give them no mercy, pulling them from pots to allow other flowers to flourish. As anyone knows who has tried to dislodge a dandelion, they cling to the soil with a lion’s strength. And they are resilient. Only a few days after the grass mower in the park destroys any flower that has dared to grow, dandelions appear again, pushing up through the grass clippings. They will be with us all through the summer, when we’re distracted by other blooms, and through the turn of another season into autumn, reminding us that beauty is always there in the humblest package.

They remind us too, that nature is forever transforming itself. It isn’t long before the patches of yellow re-emerge as delicate globes, filagrees of seeds ready to be swept away by wind or breath. These spheres are much less robust than the flowers that came before them, those tiny seeds bearing no resemblance to what they will become. But that is the point. Their purpose is to travel: to float and to dance on the whim of the breeze, before finally coming to rest, perhaps far from where they began. The dandelion shifts from form to form effortlessly. As we move into the height of spring, we could learn from its bold journey of renewal.

Coasting

Early March and curlews forage in the stubbled wheat field. We follow the road round to the island, past meadows dried to straw. The horizon opens out into big, bold clouds. On the headland, someone has left flowers at Curry’s Point, where the murderer Michael Curry was hung in a gibbet in 1739 for murdering the landlord of a local inn. We struggle past, through the wind down to the causeway.

On rocks green with gut weed, a black backed gull stalks. She picks out a crab from a rock pool. A crow, dwarfed by her size, follows her every move, hoping for a morsel. The sea is streaks of blue and aqua, fraying to grey and white at the edges. Far out, there is a blue ship. Behind the lighthouse, the turbines rotate on the horizon.

The beach is strewn with patches of small pebbles, bladderwrack and stems of kelp. A pied wagtail pecks among the seaweed. Gulls soar above the cliffs, revelling in the lift of the wind. A red container ship leaves Blyth port, sounding its horn to announce its passage. Winston plays with his ball for a while but then we walk up to the cliffs.

All is dry and bare on the cliff top. Spring is hardly noticeable here. There are two small patches of daffodils. Shrubs with fiery branches and lichen covered bark. A single wizened hawthorn is still laden with berries. Its companions in the hedgerows all bow inwards, grown in the direction of the wind. Just before we leave, a rainbow reaches out of the waves to embrace the lighthouse.

Later in the month, we walk high above the river. The sun is bright behind clouds and the light is exquisite: pale, soft and blurred. As the sun moves, it lights up the water like bouncing diamonds. The tide is in and the waves are rough. White spume fans over the piers and the deadly black midden rocks.

I walk Winston down a path lined with Alexanders, lime flowers against fresh green leaves. Smoke from a garden bonfire scents the path. The sound of the sea crescendos as we walk, until we pass under a sylvan arch and the mouth of the river is laid out before us. The lighthouse on the south pier is open to the elements, its top having been blown off in a storm last year and never found. Herd Groyne lighthouse glows crimson in the harbour. On the beach behind it, there appears to be a sand storm, waves of sand rolling like mist. To our left, Lord Collingwood gazes forever out to sea, canons poised beneath him, gull perched on his head.

Easter weekend. The equinox has just passed and tomorrow the clocks will be wound forward for spring. We join people down at the fish quay for the traditional Good Friday fish and chips. We are early and the queues still small, but they will get much longer as the day goes on. Spring is still settling into balance – sun and showers today, snow forecast for next week. The hedgerows are full of blackthorn blossom and I have seen a parakeet in the park, but there will be more storms before the season fully turns.

Abundance

On a Sunday morning during a bank holiday weekend, the cemetery hums with life. There are no funerals today. The crematorium is locked and empty. Few people attend to graves. The atmosphere is light-hearted. Though the sky is grey, a warm breeze tickles my skin. Dogs frolic, families walk and ride bikes.

Cow parsley adds to the light atmosphere: an effervescent cloud of delicate white, accented by bluebells. Here and there buttercups offer a scattering of vibrant yellow, campion an accent of magenta. Graceful cuckoo flowers almost fade into the background. The horse chestnuts still bear cones of flowers and elder are just beginning to bloom, but it is the hawthorn that is heavy with blossom. An angel bears a fading bouquet, face shrouded with spiders’ webs.

The birds are busy with hidden tasks. I hear the blackbirds’ loud song and the cackle of crows. A crow swoops out of the trees and perches on top of a grave. A few wood pigeons quietly forage. A blackbird bursts out of the bushes with an alarm call. Eventually the sun comes out and the tiny creatures appear: a bumblebee drowses around a grave and flies polka-dot the air before me.

Later in the month, I wander the country park and the wagonway. Ox-eye daisies sway in the hedgerows and yellow flag are golden-tipped spears among the pond reeds. Buttercups and viper’s bugloss pepper the gravelly heathland. Winged creatures are a-flight. A small white butterfly settles on a sun-bathed leaf. Insects with gossamer wings dance over the pond. Damselflies are everywhere, the males electric blue darts. I peer into the reeds, trying to capture one on film, until a grumpy moorhen complains. There are probably chicks among the reeds, so I back off.

The wagonway is a vein of green. Lush foliage hasn’t yet produced blossom, except for the shock of the hawthorns. The butterburr flowers are long gone, making way for a primeval leaf-scape of huge, tough leaves. Nettles and brambles tangle in the undergrowth. Tadpoles gather in a pond that is little more than a puddle. I find a long stretch of strawberry plants in the middle of the path, all in flower, a bountiful larder for later in the summer.

The gabion baskets near the river, shoring up the embankment, burst with pink valerian, red poppies, blue viper’s bugloss and more. In the park, the wildflower meadow has exploded. The area is waist high and vibrant with flowers in red, white and blue. Nearby, a wall of ladybirds shed their orange and black larval skin.

But the landscape wilts in the face of a heatwave and a lack of rain. The weather is hotter than normal and uncomfortably humid. We wait for storms that don’t come. When they do, thunder only grumbles in the distance, but the rain gushes in heavy showers that feel like blessings. The summer solstice arrives amid all this abundance, a celebration of the sun as it’s power begins to subside. There is usually a point near midsummer, when I feel the faintest hint of autumn in the air. Perhaps it is a reaction to the now-diminishing light, perhaps something else, but it always gives me a leap of excitement, before I realise that the bulk of the summer is still to come. There is more abundance to be enjoyed. Whites and yellows will give way to purples, thistledown will cloud the air, foliage will become straggly and overblown as nature’s kaleidoscope continues.

Re-shaping

I stand under the wild cherry tree, hand resting on its shattered heart.  This is my portal tree.  Stand beneath it in spring and you are intoxicated by the froth of blossom and light.  In autumn, its gilded canopy bathes you in gold.  Stand there long enough and you feel that you are no longer in an urban park, but in another place altogether, shimmering between worlds.  But last year, a winter storm cleaved the trunk in two, shearing away a large bough and leaving the heart blasted open.  I count at least fifteen rings where the wood has shattered. The vulnerable heartwood is sticky with sap.  I wonder if it will survive another fifteen years. And yet blossom time arrived and it blossomed just as it always has. The branches are sparser now, but it is surviving, with small green cherries already visible among the leaves.

For months, I have been silent, with no words to offer to the world. The year turned through each season, from spring to spring again. We were seared by the hottest day on record, watched wildfires burn out of control and suffered from the lack of rain. The landscape visibly changed. Storms, floods and fire re-shaped the world and our neighbourhoods. After our human pandemic, thousands of crabs washed up dead on our local beaches and our coastal birds were decimated by bird flu. Businesses have closed and our town is full of empty shops. People worry about how they will pay their bills and use food banks so that they can eat. Our health service crumbles and there are strikes by doctors, nurses and others. At times, it seems like everything is broken. At times, it seems apocalyptic.

And as the world changed, I changed with it. I have been buffeted by the winds that felled the trees, baked by the scorching sun, felled by the virus, but more than that. I am feeling my age. There is a re-making, a re-shaping of myself afoot. I have moved into the third act of life and the crone is approaching. It is a time to measure with joy or regret. A time to grieve the things I will now never be or do and put to bed those imagined other lives. There are now things it is pointless to spend time on because the return won’t be worth it. Nor should I worry about a legacy when we are all forgotten in the end. It’s a time to consider how I want to spend my precious future. Rekindling my creativity seems urgent. Every Friday I think this will be the weekend I write, but I can’t quite translate thought into action.

On the morning after the winter solstice, when the sun was new once more, I stood under a sky streaked crimson and wondered how to make this year count. I hadn’t watched a sunrise for months. I’d lost that everyday connection to the natural world and I wanted it back again. I started with the basics: attention and curiosity. Each day I would spend at least five minutes paying full attention to the world: rain-washed pavements like polished jet, old stones gilded by the setting sun, a full moon turning the clouds sepia, a rainbow in a denim blue sky, gulls huddled on a frozen lake, waves like white horses with manes of spume.

In the park, scores of baby trees, planted by children, are surviving. Some grow crooked, some seem too fragile to persist, but they grow all the same. Wildflower seeds scattered last year have brought poppies, cornflowers and scorpion weed. The town square has been restored to its Georgian finery and a nearby street pedestrianised, in the hope of bringing people back. Birds proclaim from hedgerows clotted with hawthorn blossom. I see my first swallow and my first butterfly. The world may have changed, and us with it, but that is nothing new. Hope carries us forward until the season turns again.

March Moment

I almost miss it. It has been a hard and hectic week at work so I am still in my head, eyes down, not paying attention to the world. Cold, hard rain tips down, wetting me and my packages. I just want to get home. But something tells me to look up.

I notice the colour of the sky first, a rich denim blue befitting the rain it contains. Then there is the rainbow, a vibrant singing arc embracing the town. The colours are so bright that they seem to fizz out of their stripes. It has a companion, another complete arc, a little more faded than the first. And perhaps, there is just the suggestion of a third. I walk through the park, turning back regularly to see the rainbows span the houses, to watch them peek between bare branches.

A man stops to tell me he is admiring the rainbows’ beauty. Another stops his car at the edge of the park to take a picture of it, sharing his excitement at how vivid it is. So for a short time, it is a shared moment, bringing strangers together with its beauty. I get home minutes later and urge my wife to go outside and look, but it has already faded. The rain has stopped and the sky has returned to a dull grey, as if the moment never happened.

The end of winter

Starlings seep and hiss from the chimneys. The sun is blinding, low in a blue sky, clouds just a white tinge at the horizon. We haven’t had rain for a while so the fallen leaves crisp as we walk. They are mostly a uniform dark brown now, clumping together in a soggy pulp in damp weather. Tree skeletons and holly leaves catch the sun. Cow parsley leaves push through the mulch. In the short cut that leads to the dene, a tree has been doctored, a cut branch now in logs beneath it. Rubbish has been cleared from around its base and the umbrella that has been there for years, filling up with leaves or snow through the seasons, is gone.

It is almost Candlemas. Another turn in the year, when the first fragile signs of spring appear. Usually I’m ready for the change, but this year winter has barely graced us with her presence. The old crone of the season has wrapped her furs around herself and decided to stay underground, occasionally sending out a few fingers of frost just to remind us she exists. I have hardly worn the warm coat I bought for the season. The frosts have been few and far between. Bulbs began sprouting in December and the birds have been calling loudly. Experts say we may have to say goodbye to winter as the climate warms, and the changing winter is already affecting wildlife.

A robin sings a delicate song. Blue tits chitter and flit between the trees. Two magpies clash over an old nest. A tree has fallen at the side of the bowling green. It is balanced on the fence, roots in the air and branches reaching for the green. The disarray of winter remains: shrivelled berries, ragged leaves, a handful of stinking Iris seeds in their pods. Somehow I had expected more signs of spring, given the lack of winter, but the spring flowers remain firmly beneath the soil and the trees are still naked.

The reeds are spun gold. Skinny fingers of willow drape the pond. It is full of activity. A flock of black-headed gulls roams between water and grass. Mobs of mallard drakes gather around the hens. A moorhen chases another, channelling water across the pond. The air is full of the gentle quacking of the ducks and the low cries of the gulls. People and dogs wander the paths and feed the birds. This is not a winter’s day as we know it.

A few days after Candlemas, winter pays a visit. The old crone whips up a storm of freezing wind, rain and sleet. But it all seems too little too late. In just a few days, signs of spring have appeared. A single pink cyclamen flower brightens the rubble of a wall collapsed by Storm Arwen. Crocuses sprout like small cups of honey and I see my first daffodil. I can’t be sad that spring has arrived, but I am sad for the season lost.

By late February there have been five named storms. Some unlucky areas suffer flooding and power cuts, a few have snow, but there is no retreat from spring. We walk through the cemetery at the tail end of Storm Franklin, the wind a soft roar through the trees. The grounds are full of windfallen trees, large and small. Chaffinches hop among grounded branches. Magpies squabble high up in those still standing. But mostly the birds offer a muted soundscape, as though cowed by the wind.

The light swings between sunshine and gloom. Rain is in the air; later it will rain all night. I hunt for hibernating ladybirds. Since Bug Woman wrote that they like to huddle on grave stones I have looked for them. I’m delighted to find some harlequins huddled in a crease of stone and orange ladybirds tucked into weathered letters.

But here, spring means snowdrops. Enclosed by graves, blanketing the ground under the trees, sprouting in small clumps and shimmering rivers. There are a few purple and yellow crocuses, but they can’t compete with the sheer volume of snowdrops. Luminous and almost transparent when the sun catches them, they are like pools of light. A stone angel boasts a bouquet, but snowdrops quietly adorn the home-made cross left for ‘Joe’. There is no doubt here that spring has arrived. There will be more storms to come. And more uncertainty. We wake the next morning to war in Europe and wonder, yet again, what the future will bring. All we can be certain of is that winter has ended and spring will always come.

Disrupting

As twilight comes, the street lamp across the street begins to sway back and forth. The trees begin to dance. A storm of leaves and dust are swept up into the air, swirling past my first floor office window, occasionally slapping the glass. Biting sleet accompanies me on the walk home. Storm Arwen has brought a rare ‘red’ weather warning, advising of potential loss of life due to flying debris. We are told to stay away from the coast and not to travel if we can avoid it. All night the wind roars. There are occasional bangs and crashes. But we are lucky, with no more than a few overturned things in the yard. A buddleia has swept out of a neighbour’s yard into the lane. A yard wall has collapsed across the road. In the park, a tree sized bough of the poplar has sheared off and now balances in the canopy. Pavements are heaped with golden leaves, twigs and red berries, like seasonal offerings. That afternoon, wind is replaced by snow – the first of the winter – a light dusting that soon turns to ice.

In these dark days of winter, routine lies heavily on my shoulders. I struggle out of bed in darkness to the daily routines of washing, dressing, breakfast. It is just getting light when I take Winston for his walk and on our return I go to the library, where the daily routines of work begin. The storm is a welcome distraction for me, after the third warmest autumn on record and settled weather, but not for those deprived of power for weeks to come. Now the landscape is damp. Soggy leaves. Twigs and branches vivid with lichen. The damp accentuates the colours: vibrant greens of ivies and ferns, rich browns of leaves and bark. The trees are suddenly leafless, but a party of wood pigeons has found something to feed on, on an evergreen across the railway tracks. Hidden sparrows chirp in the privet, starlings call from the trees above.

Mid month there is another break to routine. l have a meeting at headquarters which means a sunrise visit to the country park across the road. By the time I arrive, the sky has already blushed orange and subsided to a subtle blue. The sun is a molten semi-circle, just peeping over the horizon. The landscape is dull and water-logged. Clumps of drooping brown grass, mud stippled with paw prints, spongy patches of moss. A few stubborn leaves cling to bare stems. I hear a plaintive seep now and again, but the birds are well hidden, until a trio of goldfinches flutter overhead.

Gorse leads me up to the sundial, spiky green stems that give no hint of their luminosity in other seasons. I have to shield my eyes when I reach the top of the hill. The sun is almost a complete circle now, breathing fire. There is a hint of orange to the gnomon, the shadow of a bench crossing it. The sundial has been painted and cleaned. It will be part of a new memorial to those lost to the pandemic, linking art works at the four compass points along what were once waggon ways crossing the borough.

I hear robins singing. To north and west, the distant hills are layered with mist. The sun begins to catch the landscape, turning sea and clouds to pastels. The ferry is on its way into port from Amsterdam and the sun lights it pale orange. A metro crossing the fields reflects copper. There is now a dividing line in the park. Below it, the trees remain a dull brown, but above it, they glow bronze.

I walk down to the pond, past wild carrot nests and alders studded with cones. Guelder rose berries and rosehips gleam at the edge of the water. Mallards, moorhens and a tufted duck float on a pond that reflects the sunrise reflected from the surrounding buildings.

Later that day, there is unanticipated news. My story ‘The Muse’ has been published by Toasted Cheese Literary Magazine. Inspired by stories of foundlings, it is a story about identity, that you can read HERE. I also get some more great feedback from an assessment of my novel. In these last days of December, my routine is being disrupted in the best of ways. There will be many more dark, dispiriting days before spring but I hope for a touch of the unexpected to spur me through them.

Preparing

The first day of November bears gifts for those who watch the skies. A line of four swans flies in silence among huge flocks of squawking geese arrowing south. A thick, vivid rainbow embraces the library as I get to work.

November brings golden sunrises and swirling pastel sunsets, but when we visit the dene the sun is just a blur of light struggling through gloom. The floodlights have been lit on the football pitches nearby and they seem to be hazed with mist. I remind myself that it is only lunch time, since it feels like the prelude to twilight already. The weekend’s gales have faded into a gentle breeze. I am warm because I am moving, but if I stopped I would feel the bite of cold air. Meteorologists have forecast snow for the coming week and the sensationalist papers are making a fuss about it, but the chances are that we won’t see it much below the north of Scotland.

The dene is slumbering, or so it seems. A few soft twitters from a tit, a brief alarm from a blackbird, but otherwise the trees are silent. The burn is a chain of still puddles. Tawny leaves are interlaced with ivy, raspberry and bramble leaves. A handful of sow thistle and a lone herb robert are the only blooms left. The rushes have yellowed. The avenue of lindens has dropped many of its leaves and they lie in heaps along the path and around the tree roots. One birch among a row of others has been lost to fungi, huge brackets climbing the trunk that have killed it from within.

The pond is peaceful. Trailing willows and floating birds. An older couple circuit the water slowly, holding hands. But then the black headed gulls rise in a frenzy, their screeches filling the air. A man and his son are feeding them. The mallards and moorhens move quietly and determinedly to take their fill among the flurry of white wings.

I know this season isn’t as quiet as it seems. Some creatures are still preparing for winter, hoarding what food they can. Some are busy munching their way through the leaf litter, breaking it down to feed themselves and whatever is nurtured by the remaining mulch. Spiders have been encasing their eggs safely in silk for the winter. They won’t see their children born but have given them the best chance they can. Fungi burst into fruit so that they can send out their spores. Trees pull nutrients back within, renewing themselves for the year to come.

And I’m preparing too. I’m no longer sending stories out, I’m holding them in. At Halloween I festooned my altar with photos of women writers. Not only to honour them, but to honour the thread of creativity that has been passed down through the generations. To remind me that there are others who have come before, women who can inspire and hold space for me when doubt comes. I am no longer languishing, but venturing out in search of stories. And then venturing in to find the words with which to tell them.

The air is full of drizzle on the day after Remembrance Sunday. Knitted poppies adorn the entrance to the cemetery. Rain patters softly on the remaining canopy. Leaves crackle as they fall. These gentle tickings are the only sounds. A discarded pumpkin lantern leers from the base of a tree. Here too, the landscape seems to slumber. But crows dig deep beneath heaps of leaves to find food. A squirrel weaves among the trees. On a nearby gravestone, a gull perches, watching us with interest. And these are only the preparations that we can see.

We walk past the crematorium and overhear part of the eulogy as a funeral takes place. The celebrant talks of a man who enjoyed photography. I smile at that creative thread that links me unexpectedly on this day to a stranger. We prepare, but we never know if our preparations will be enough or when they will no longer matter. Still, we do it, because we hope for a future in which they are enough. I am lucky to have shelter and food for the coming winter. The larder I fill is a creative one. Stories and images are the things I gather to see me through.

Rolling

It has been more than a year since I climbed to the sundial. I would often walk here near dawn, when I had to visit work’s HQ, just across the road, but I haven’t been here since before the first lockdown. We come at midday on a Sunday, the sun unrelenting. The song of a robin accompanies us as we step into the reserve. We pass the butterburr patch, where the flowers are blooming, purple heads tilting towards the sun. Hazel and hawthorn branches clickle and clackle in the wind as we walk a path between them. Then through an embrace of bushy scots pines, until we reach the water.

The ponds are opaque and mucky green. Drowned alders droop towards water that looks thick and lifeless. The water birds are in hiding. We turn to the hill path. Cowslips scatter the grassland and a few primroses have yet to open. Predominant are gorse and blackthorn. The lemon of the gorse and the white of the blackthorn vivid in the landscape. At times they are threshold trees, pointing the way to a meandering path.

A wild wind whips around the top of the sundial. They say we’ll have snow tomorrow, but that seems difficult to believe. The horizon is clear. I see a ship passing behind the distant lighthouse, watch the turbines turning out at sea. It is just past noon and the sundial’s shadow is unequivocal. It’s looking a little neglected: graffiti on the gnomon, broken glass on the ground. A couple exercise by running up and down the steps. Two women and a spaniel join us at the peak. We see a couple of bees. A pair of great tits. A magpie.

In the lonely hours of the night, winter steals back in. Snow flirts in the shadows leaving just a sheen of ice on the morning grass. For the next week it comes and goes, small whirling flakes that appear without warning, while the sun also shines. I watch from the window as I work. One night it stays, gracing the rooftops and the ground with a light covering. The sun shines and it looks like spring, but the cold is bitter.

Time has been on my mind. In these last two years it has stretched and bent, lingered and vanished. Memories pile up, often making me cringe and shrink. But I remember things too, things I liked, things that influenced me – things of another age. Watching Prince Philip’s funeral, I find myself thinking about endings. I wonder if everyone gets to an age where each death, each pause, seems to signal the end of an era we think of as ours. If life is a general knowledge quiz, then I’m getting to the point where I no longer know the answers.

Still, spring rolls on. The hedges are fresh with hawthorn leaves and blackthorn blossom. The cherry blossom buds are about to unfurl. The grass has had its first cut. There are some bluebells in the park and the dandelions are blindingly bright. And I move on too. My wintry paintings move towards summer colour. I send out stories, Some are rejected. I send them out again. I don’t know all the answers, but I know how to keep moving.

Trembling

Nature trembles on the edge of spring. The sun reaches for the earth with renewed strength and the wind whips through the land with a renewed spirit. In places, spring breaks through. The lilac crocus shoots in the park that survived the snow have become delicate starbursts with hot orange centres. A single snowdrop and a single daffodil plant are pioneers from elsewhere, not normally seen here. Delicate nettle leaves and the shoots of bluebells have appeared. Five new trees have been planted. Everything is small, tender and pretty. Only the strident call of the great tit and the drumming of the woodpecker have any urgency. It is a gentle start to spring that belies the activity beneath the surface. We are about to experience the most excitable season of the year.

When I am about to create something, there is a flutter in my chest. Excitement at the idea that is just there, waiting to be born. This is the liminal moment – the moment before creation begins, when I tremble at the edge of possibility. There is excitement that it will work out exactly as I envision it, flavoured by a hint of fear that it won’t. I wonder if this is how nature feels on the brink of spring, knowing that her most creative time is about to begin. A twitch in the roots of the trees, a throbbing in the soil, a note in the song of the birds: the world, trembling with anticipation at what is to come.

Tiny cleavers and a single white deadnettle with pendulous flowers fringe the path to the dene. Hollies dominate the still-naked trees, gleaming in the sunlight. In the dene, spring waits. The burn is a trickle. Alder catkins sway at its edges. Silver birches dazzle. It feels like spring should be further along than it is. I walk down the avenue of linden trees and glance up. A kestrel hovers. I watch it through the branches until it gives up and flies off. A single clump of snowdrops lies on the edge of a pathway of purple crocuses. Dozens of shoots are waiting to bloom into daffodils, and a few already have. A great tit flies across my path. A small bird that might be a young greenfinch follows it. The two-note call of the great tit strikes the air. On the pond, the ducks are snoozing, hidden among the reeds. Two moorhens preen on a shared rock.

The river trembles on the point of a turning tide. A light mist hangs over the landscape. Out on the flats, fishermen dig for worms and crabs. Gulls cluster on the rocks and forage at the edge of the tide. Great hulks of driftwood are like giants’ bodies lounging on the sand. Someone has left flowers beside a driftwood memorial. Slightly upriver, an enormous cruise ship looms over the marina. It would usually be sailing the Mediterranean or the Caribbean, but it is waiting for the moment it can cruise again. In the meantime, 3,000 passenger cabins stand empty. One of the crew jogs back and forth along a deck below the many balconies.

It is my fiftieth birthday. I tremble on the edge of another decade. There’s a kind of excitement at reaching this age and wondering what the future might bring. I know that I have most likely lived longer than the years I have left but I don’t regret that. My concern is only how best to use it. Memories flash through my head unbidden, often from the earliest of years, and remind me that I wouldn’t wish to be young again – not for a minute. I look forward to seeing how I will grow into elderhood. My mind is full of dreams and plans, including all the creations yet to come. Life has a habit of surprising us, and as I stand on another threshold, I feel that tremble of excitement about what is to come.