Spring

There’s a spring in my step,
And it hurts,
Tra-la.
              (Roger McGough)

Dear Holly,
Slowly, (have you noticed?) surely, (have you not seen?) inexorably (had you forgotten?) change is coming. Imperceptibly the scythe of the returning sun is eroding the borders of the frozen kingdom, and for the first time in months I feel the loosening of winter’s iron grip. Spring, the earth’s best suit, is just a matter of weeks away and I can hardly wait. Soon the hedgerows will be burgeoning with freshly pressed and dressed greenery, whilst in a million nests and burrows little bundles of life will be fidgeting, mewling and snuffling.

As a boy, and I have no idea why, I always viewed February the 14th as the last day of winter. Perhaps it had something to do with the St. Valentine day thing, although quite why I should see the giving and receiving of anonymous cards and gifts as a presage to spring is totally beyond me. This feeling was so strong that it persisted even in the years when snow fell well after this date and as a consequence I would be walking around celebrating the cessation of winter whilst up to me bum in snow. Go figure.

Spring is sprung,
The grass is ris’,
I wonder where the birdies is?
                              (anon)

When spring is upon us, if your mother is agreeable, we will all pile into my little car and drive until we find a patch of uncluttered wind swept sand, there to play frizbee, ball or whatever upon. And whilst we laughingly compete and cheat, the neighbouring sea, ever mindful of its duty and with complete disdain for our childish games, will continue to encroach with testing assault, rushing ever in and out. Afterwards, whilst freezing our buns off on the wind whipped frontage, we will fumble with blind fingers through the ruins of our paper bags in search of that last tired chip from our fish supper. Or, if it is too inclement, huddle in some cosy café with toasted scones and cups of tea. (come to think of it, bugger the fish’n’chips!)

And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume,
And the seagulls crying.
                                              (John Masefield)

Now, you will not remember this, but I was with you on one of the first occasions that you saw the sea. It was on an unseasonably warm and welcoming mid-September day out on the Welsh coast and, if memory serves, you would have been about three years old. We parked directly on the beach, and on leaving the car your mother let you down onto the sand.

Mistake. Huge mistake.

As your feet touched the ground you took of toward the water like a greyhound. Incredibly you managed to outstrip me whilst simultaneously shedding your clothing in joyous abandon. I, managed, thankfully, to catch you as you splashed through the shallows in a complete delirium. You were, by this time, as naked as a jaybird and laughing like a loon, whilst I was panicked, totally out of breath and completely soaked. Let me just say that before embarking upon a similar expedition I will have to secure your promise that there will no reoccurrence of this event as I’m far too old and slow to catch you now.

I must go down to the sea again,
Down to the sea and sky,
I left my shoes and socks down there,
I wonder if they’re dry?
                       (Spike Milligan)

Which brings me to the downside of spring. Road sense. You see it’s those little bunnies ain’t it, and all those scampering higgledy-hedgehogs, who along with their friends, the tiny pipe-whistled sparrows and bustling blackbirds fresh from their mummy’s nest, all thronging together and heading unerringly for the main road.

Well what I want to know is, who gave them directions? And more importantly, why? I mean, they haven’t got a car have they? And it’s not as if any one of them could ride a bike even if their life depended upon it, which, as it happens, it does. And be honest, have you ever seen a hedgehog or a squirrel riding on a bus? Exactly, and neither have I, and in any case I know that they haven’t got a season ticket, because they haven’t got any pockets.

So why the road? Well, I’ll tell you why. It’s because they are stupid, and I mean really stupid. Not the sort of ‘Oh dear I left the tap on and it’s run all over the floor’ stupid. No, this is more your sort of ‘Oh look everybody, here comes a great big shiny red, eighteen wheeler, ten and a half ton truck doing about a hundred zillion miles an hour down the road, I must jump out and give it a great big hug!’ stupid.
Well we all know what happens next don’t we?

SPLAT!

Bits of bunny everywhere, hedgehog pizza, and squirrels and field mice as flat as turds.
And as is the norm for such gatherings the scorecard reads,
Motor car and larger lumbering stuff; hundreds.
Field and Woodland combined kamakazi corp; nil.

When a wasp splats onto your windscreen,
And is mortally overcome,
What’s the last thing that passes through his mind?
Well that’s easy,
It’s his bum!
                              (Chris Wilson White.)

But that’s not all, for there is larger game for the truly discerning cognoscenti. There are times, on shallow sun shafted spring mornings, when the young deer seem desperate to catch my bus. They appear as if summoned, out of the soft green and browns of the freshly minted woodland and, in huge, skittish, agile bounds seek to keep apace of my lumbering charabanc, with its supine and largely uncaring cargo, for anything up to a hundred meters. Their leaving is as sudden and as unexplained as their arrival. Turning on sixpences they flicker and twist over hedge and ditch, and in a farewell flash of white bobbed bottoms they are gone, melding and blending with the welcoming undergrowth. I have no idea what drives them to do this, but I know that eventually, despite my every effort to avoid them, I must surely eventually collide with one, causing some unfortunate Bambi to join that big herd in the sky.

And thus it is recorded,
In chapter and in verse,
That in a car and hedgehog fight,
The hedgehog comes off worse.
                         (Pam Ayers)

So here it comes then, the ruffling breezes running slyly through the gaps in our winter wraps before chasing errant across fallow fields to buffet the decaying clumps of last Autumn’s stubble. Whilst we, ambushed on our Sunday walks by rains splashed out of a clear blue skies, trudge past frail, closed daffodils sheltering under half-dressed hedges. We bow our heads against the final slew where snowdrop and crocus (spring’s two foremost optimists) stand, colours battened, shivering and bending bravely in the new found sun.

To walk through that quickening time will be good, to smell the air before the May and all its obvious overtures to summer. To feel that keen sharp edge of spring still running hard against the cruel face of winter. To breath deeply, knowing we are alive, and while we may, run slip-sliding and splashing down boggy tracks that summer will render flat, eroding spring’s endeavours in favour of a plain, both featureless and dusty. So remember now to mark the magic in that place where you first find spring.

There is room enough for a snippet of one more poem, one more poet. It is the sad and wonderful ‘The Mower’ by Philip Larkin. Ostensibly it is about a hedgehog and the lawn mower with which the poet inadvertently kills the spiny one. But, as is usual with Larkin, the face value of the poem has little or nothing to do with the real message. In fact what he is really asking us to see is our complete lack of concern over our misuse of time. His poem literally bleeds and pleads with us to live in the moment, to seize the day, because, although we never want to believe it, there may not be another.

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
                                   (Philip Larkin)

A poem should be read and read, then read again. It should be taken to the tops of hills or tall buildings and shouted joyously to the skies. It should be painted on huge white sheets, which in turn should be tied to the back of those old fashioned two tiered planes to be dragged across a still blue sky.
After all, a poem, well constructed, is a thing of great beauty.

Listen, I’m going now because my eyes are heavy and I’m yawning so widely that I’ve gone really bald and shiny.
So I go, firstly to sleep, and then (because I’m a very lucky chap) to drive my big orange and cream bus through the Oxfordshire countryside.

                                                          By-by Holly.

                                                                           Love’n’stuff.

Chris Wilson White.