Slave to Time.

Whatever happened to spring? I have a vague memory of seeing the first tiny hawthorn flower showing its lone white face in a hedgerow somewhere along Mill Lane, and I thought: ‘That’s early. I reckon we’re going to have a good show of May this year. I hope we get some sunshine so we get the full beauty of it.’ And, of course, I remembered Tennyson as I always do: Blow trumpet! The world is white with May.

And then I remembered – just as vaguely – that I did see the glory of frosted, sunlit crowns once or twice in the early days of the month, looking for all the world as though a blizzard had descended in the warm sunshine but missed everything except the trees. Today I noticed that all the trees were green. Where did the white of the May flowers go?

That’s the trouble with nature; it’s all so bloody ephemeral. As soon as you start enjoying something, that old tyrant Time sweeps it away and leaves you bewildered. He pulls us along like a slave driver, or maybe the conductor of a whistle-stop tour bus, never giving us the space we want to enjoy it for as long as we want.

And life isn’t so different. Just when you realise how deep the connection with a certain person goes, she disappears. Where did she go? Did I imagine her? Did she ever exist? Does anything really exist?

I think I need a new version of reality. I gather it’s what some mad people get, and I sometimes think I envy them.