The swifts are back.
Actually they came back not even yesterday, but the day before, only I was so busy thinking about pornographic websites that I did not get around to telling you.
Sorry about that.
They are here now, anyway, filling the air with their bubbling, piping cries, and I am beginning to feel the first beginnings of hope that we might have a summer this year after all.
The presence of the swifts is just about the only evidence for the incoming summer. I am still wearing a scarf, thermal vest and a jumper.
Obviously that is not all that I am wearing. I am wearing all the usual things as well, but did not feel that I needed to describe those, like in the old-fashioned children’s stories where nobody ever visits the bathroom. Some things can sensibly be omitted from a story for reasons of pacy flow and not boring one’s audience.
You do not need to hear details about shirts and socks and knickers.
I have not even been tempted to clout-casting, and unless things brighten up considerably, will not be bothering even when May is out.
Indeed, we are still lighting the fire. Not all of the time, and most especially when the Weather Gods have been paying attention to the contents of my washing basket, but sometimes, when the world outside is chill and drear.
This does not matter, because for once we are absolutely inundated with firewood.
We came home from splitting up logs at the farm the other day, to find an enormous stack of stout planks next to the dustbins, very charitably donated by the friendly builders opposite. There was yet another the day after.
I have been cutting it up during the day whilst Mark is at work, but the shelves are practically full now, and there is still a veritable forest leaning against the shed door.
This is making it difficult to get in and out of the shed, so it is a good job that Mark is busy doing other things at the moment.
Then yesterday the Peppers reminded us that the alley leading out of their back yard was also full of firewood, waiting for us to collect it, and it jolly well needed moving because they wanted the space for their motorbike.
Of course we were not going to turn it down. A winter of needing thick jumpers in the house is very definitely a winter of discontent, and a happy marriage might well be joyfully nurtured by a shed packed to the eaves with dry firewood.
Hence when we had both finished work last night we backed Mark’s taxi up to the alley and loaded it.
Misfortunately it was loaded already, because Ted had cut a tree down, and given Mark a stack of logs.
In the absence of any better ideas, because I was jolly well not going to dirty my own lovingly cleaned and cared for taxi, we piled the Peppers’ firewood on to Mark’s taxi roof, which went a bit concave in the middle and acquired a few new dents and scrapes, and tried to chug inconspicuously out of Windermere and across to the farm.
Several people looked surprised, but we did not see any curious policemen, which was a jolly good thing.
We were still unloading firewood when the sun had gone down, and sat together in the taxi for a cup of tea in the quiet darkness, listening to the sheep and the last calls of the birds.
When we got up this morning there was another load of firewood by the dustbin, and when I came home from work this evening there was another.
We have filled practically every firewood-storing space that we have.
I have to keep reminding myself that this is a Good Thing. We are going to have a very easy winter next year.
All the same, I seem to be spending an awful lot of time digging out splinters this week.
I am secretly hoping that this particular thread of good fortune comes to an end quite soon.
Have a picture of Roger Poopy on his walk with Pepper this afternoon. It was a good job they went in the stream, because Pepper had just shoved him in the mud. At least he came back rinsed.
