Day 111: Coat-Free

Today is fast-track spring.  I am coat-free in the park, and all the birds are very excited.  I don't speak bird, but I think it's fair to say that they are pretty content with the way the day is panning out. 


Underfoot, a cheery carpet of crocuses. 
(I suddenly want to eat some Cadbury's Caramel.  Weird.)   


I sit on a tree-stump up at the top of the park.  Away from the obvious pull of the lake, and the playground and the cafe, it's where people thin out and you can sit undisturbed.  The sun is hot on my back and if you filter out the distant traffic hum and toddler shrieks, you can clearly hear nature expanding in the warmth.  I'm not being fanciful - there is a distinct low-level creaking and seeping.

A woodland guru once invited me to 'listen' to a birch tree in early spring.  I thought it was a spiritual vibes-thing, and although happy to go with it, didn't expect much.  Very surprised to hear a pulsing whooshing noise when I pressed my ear to the trunk.  The sap literally rising.  And even inanimate things expand in heat.  I was brought up in a timber-framed seventeenth century house which creaked comfortingly in the sunshine like the rigging of an ancient ship.

It's only been two weeks since there was ice on the inside of the windows, and I couldn't imagine sitting on grass or walking barefoot.  And now it's too hot to wear a coat. 

I spend most of the afternoon wandering around the park, expanding and creaking. 


In searching for pictures, I come across the image for the new, updated Caramel Bunny.  It's a depressing business when this (above) is turned into this (left). 

Old-style Bunny - surrounded by flowers and friends, smiling and with a gently rounded tummy.

New-style Bunny - dead-eyed, trout-pouted, newly-waisted Katie Price lookalike.  Nothing there to interact with except for Bunny's swaggering self-interest, and a host of suggestive pillows.  'Still got it'.  No.  You lost it.