Spring is in the air and I feel fine! This year, my favourite season is promising to be a time of genuine rejuvenation and change. Yes I have gone and done it (!) that is handed in my notice at work and jettisoned a rather unsatisfactory occupation in favour of something not all together dissimilar, but more convenient, and local, and something that offers a degree of flexibility. It all feels like a bit of a return to the more “bohemian” existence of earlier years. I’m starting to act on impulse again and throwing off all constraints and routines in favour of some good old self-seeking destiny control. It is after all so much better to be in the driving seat of ones life rather than being dragged along in some trailer and well and truly stuck in a rut. Even if this destiny vehicle crashes, at least I will feel gratified in the knowledge that I have taken control of a situation, and that sense of objective control, however errant, is quite important to me. It is better than being a passive “victim” and surrendering to a useless fate at the hands of others.
I love this time of year more than any other, a sensual reinvigoration blowing away the drab sterility of late winter. My prised potted camellia is in full bloom, it seems to provide an early but disappointingly brief show of colour. Still, a very elegant and “old fashioned” i.e. indigenous looking shrub that suites the setting quite well. I need to replant the front border this year as I really do miss looking out onto a bit of greenery. The previous owner had a very vigorous plantation of laxiflorus, a distant relative of the highly toxic Ragwort but for most of the summer I looked out onto a mass of yellow daisy like flowers, not so keen on those strange blue-green leaves with white underside though. I still have an ambition to make an 8mm time lapse film of my ultra vigorous Irish tree Ivy growing over the bedroom window until it has completely blocked out the light how weird would that be? They say that you can hear this stuff growing in June.
I keep on returning to Laurence Armstrong-Hughes’s on line journal (musings) page currently recounting canal borne adventures in the fabulous county of Shropshire. It all tends to evoke happy fun memories of long gone canal boating days with my parents. We had our own 45-foot boat moored up at Poynton and did the trip down to Oxford on several occasions. I must admit that the Macclesfield Canal and Shropshire Union leg of the journey was quite outstanding. Also, chugging through the Harecastle Tunnel at 4mph was an unforgettable experience and not for the faint hearted. It is the best part of 20 to 30 minutes in pitch black with sometimes less than three inches of headroom and you can’t see a light at the end for ages!