Easing the Spring

I think it may be time to take stock. This is a euphemism but it’s the most I feel able to say right now – a clear indication that it’s time to shut up for a bit. Spring is certainly here when even the weather admits it and the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough. Well, it sings on the apple tree. It really does – my neighbour has taken up bird-listening and can identify one twitter from another. Even so, perversely perhaps, I feel inclined to go inside and shut the curtain. I speak in metaphor, you understand, for I do like being outside now and have no intention of shutting out the lovely light. Euphemisms and jaded metaphors from a Sign-reader who likes to call a spade a spade – yes, definitely time. I have, in any case, nothing to declare (apart from the fact that my nails have grown as I've stopped biting them and I went and had a manicure for the first time in my life, nothing special but now they are very shiny). And, you know, life and stuff.

But I have been working on poems and sent some off, and I am shortly to visit my friend, Ms Far North, in Scotland, where we will be doing and talking about The Writing because that’s what we love.

Be seeing you – if not sooner, then later. For, as my great-aunt Lina used to say: “Unkraut vergeht nicht” – I won’t bother to translate, everyone has Babelfish these days after all, but the gist of it is that weeds, like old soldiers, don’t die. So I'll be back.

Take care, y’all.