progress

It's hard to beleive that it's March already. There are easter eggs bursting out of shops in town and daffodils in blue elastic bands cluttering buckets at the tills of super markets. You get out of bed in the morning and the first thing to do can be put the kettle on or brush your teeth because you no longer need to find two jumpers, socks, slippers and hot water bottles to prevent feeling hypothermic on your way to the bathroom. The sun has returned too which is welcome. I think the sun makes you sort of bi-polar in these moving times. If it appears everyone is infected, moods miraculously rise, people ill-advisedly don 3/4 length trousers and tank tops and the roofs of convertables creak down for the first time since September last. Then a cloud comes though and it feels like a tease as you are thrown back into the doom and gloom and snow and salt and eternal grey of winter. You want your coat and to put the lights on and bury yourself in books or television rather than go for a walk. Then it returns and you start to casually wonder where your frizbee is.

I always feel incredibly impatient with spring. Yes bulbs and flowers are pretty and birds tweeting feels hopeful but as soon as the sun graces the sky and the de-icer is back in the boot images of beaches and bikinis and barbecues and bathing flood my mind. I imagine swimming in clean rivers and camping all night with fire and stars and grass. Taking a jaunt to a beach becomes imperative and I start to try on swim suits in my wardrobe. I pass the suncream and beach towels in boots and my eye draws to them, surely our suncream from last year is now past it's best? I think about grabbing a book and going to the green to read, and wearing skirts with no tights, converse with no rising damp, dresses with no cover up jumper,cardigan,hat,coat,scarf and gloves. I pick the brightest things I can and I make salads and drink limocello, I grab my shades and put on the beach boys and step outside the door in a haze of bright warm yellow, hopeful, neurotic glee.
And then reality hits me. Reality is 9 degrees celcius and no matter how warm a shade of yellow your clothes are the wind chill factor rips right through turning them to grey. After being out for an hour you come home full of regret and sorrys to hot chocolate, fluffy blankets, baggy jumpers and central heating. Old friends shunned for a mirage!

Spring is a tease and it's very hard to not get dragged away, especially when trips are being planned to go to Sicily for a conference in September where it'll be all white stone, lemonade and mosqito bites. I'm going to my gran's today for her birthday party which always reminds me of spring in full flow. It's grey today and not a single bulb is up in my garden though. I'm going to try and focus on other things for another month of so and then consider my sandals in April. It will be hard though because I'm reading Rebecca for book group (my choice) and it won't let me stop imagining the sun.

good days just happen

Today I had a really good day, which was a bonus after a fairly stessfull day prior. I had a big piece of work to do for my research that I thought would take a long time but I managed to get it all run off in about an hour and a half. I love when that happens. After that the sun came out and I cleaned and dressed and the cats lay on the warm blankets in the pale yellow sunshine, rolling over in bliss due to their sun-highs, showing unbeleivably soft cream coloured bellies with black spots. I went to work to fill in the time sheets to get paid and having not done so the prior month I left with images of my savings piling high with that lumps entrance to my account this time next month. I went to university and printed the work I had done earlier and chatted with Ann the secretary before picking up a brown envelope of marked work from semester one. The results were pleasing and I put my print outs in alongside my marked work and slotted into my bag in that knack I have, the bag being exactly a4 in size already. Then I left the building, picked up some cash and headed to the train in the sun. It's funny how the sun can instantly change everything. It's the smells I notice most. The pvc roofed downward stairway at the station to the platform smelled warm like a greenhouse with out the plants, and of blue paint and plastics. Walking along from charing cross to finnieston I crossed the motorway and looked at all the cars coming in endless streams. Seeing this feels safe to me, for a reason of which I am unaware. The cyclical nature of 'keep the kettle boiling' making the road seem endless and the drivers continual. I like the uniformity of the motorway and the image that is created of it with elevated perspective. I followed a girl in semi-gym clothes accidentally. She walked faster than me, I was early, and enjoying the walk so slower. I kept on catching her up at traffic lights and admiring her hair done in one of those messy but also perfectly precise buns, pinned up with kirby grips and bits falling down in selective areas. I cant remember when she and I parted ways because I wasn't actually following her, we were just sharing the path. Then I went down the lane to the tearoom I was meeting Lesley at. It's a remarkable little place. You go down the lane to what looks like a builder's back court on a broken cobbled street, dank with puddles under the cover. Then you turn left and see a row of little tiny buildings all painted different colours. At the far end of the row there is a little tiny annexe of a building like the backside of another one. Inside is hidden lane. We had high tea. Sandwiches, scones, meringues, carrot cake, brownies and pink iced cupcakes I couldn't fit which were then packaged into a box with a heart shaped window, and taken home for a certain man I love. Lesley told me good news about her career and it cheered me right up, she has had a really awful time trying to find the job/career path for her and it seems that it's all turning round - she's one of the good people, and she is finally getting what she deserves. We mildly shopped at the charity shops on dumbarton road where I picked up what I call a 'granny cart' which is one those shopping trolley type upright bags with handles to pull like a suitcase. Mine is lightweight and folds away. Then I went home on the train and tried the cart out at aldi. I got my workwear jumper finally, a mens large which drowns me and I love and now I am sitting on the sofa, in m giant jumper, with blankets and pillows and hot water bottles and peppermint tea. Stuart has just got home and the cats are milling about, snoozing at my feet, mewing for dinner. I really like that soul destroying days are followed by ones that top it back up and spill over. All that from a little sunshine.

seasonal shift

Did you know that things have changed? Did you realise that the seasons have shifted like tectonic plates or old industrial machinery covered with spider webs, material parts and dead skin? Winter came and everything grinded to a halt and snow came and everything was so unbelievably still. So still that no-one thought movement would come again. Then the ground turned to caster sugar, then demerera, and back to moist black and brown. Winter threatens each year to linger, damp fog clinging and never willing to relinquish it's grasp on all in existence. But inevitably the old grinder cranks and clunks back to life, with the impatient gradual increase of a steam train pulling away. Winter is the industrial age, devoid of colour. An acromatic world of tones and metallic textures. Silence and white noise.

It changed though, and you didn't even notice. All caught up in your own era of change. Things are moving now, so slowly, but moving. You will notice it too, once it is apparent to the surface senses. I noticed it a few weeks ago, in the senses below. It is a feeling. It is in the air, at first not to see or to smell. It is like a chemical reaction to the change in daylight. It is a colour; a tinge that alters everything light touches. It is there already.

I tried to smell it this morning, but it is too immature yet. I openend the bay and all I could smell was the city. It is a transition. I couldn't smell winter, yet spring was still too far away. I smelled food, drink from the shops. I tried the back, hopeful for something more normal. I imagine I smelled it, the smell of the air affected with sunshine and growth. I smelled the same diluted. It's soon though. It's on its way.

I love this time of year. There is hope and knowledge that change will come gradually and upwards as things open, emerge, warm and sprawl. Soon it will be seeds and loungers, water and colour and heat.