Up the road, afternoon (Sunday)

A hard winter, a late spring and flowering, perhaps a good summer, and the mirabelliers may set fruit this year. I imagine of the crunch of sugar and the pastry.

Down the road, evening

Sunset uplights gilded clouds, renders distant grain silos and windturbines chalky pink.

A flock of high-flying curlews, I count in threes, thirty at least before they are out of sight.

Water mill, Guettes-es-Lievres, afternoon.

How much calmer it is here now than a month ago; the roar of the waters has subsided to a placid chatter, and primroses and wood anemones illuminate the ground.

Up the road, afternoon.

There is the faintest green haze over the willows, but it is wintry still, and the pool with the poplars where the starlings are roosting shines coldly through the trees.

Up the road, afternoon.

To walk the green and harrowed lines
of nearly empty earth and sky
straight and undelighted, grasping
at nothing, might be an answer.

Till the lark rises,
and I grasp.

Plan d'eau, Lamballe.

A black-headed gull, swimming duck fashion, makes a quick darting lunge in the shallow water by the old mill, and comes up with a wriggling fish. It seems quite surprised.

Woods behind Arondel, walking Moos with Mol (Sunday).

The crisp brown beech litter comes up to the dogs' elbows and seems full of interesting smells.

Emilie's sloping wooded garden is full of the small pale wild daffodils and celandine.

Port du Légué, Plerin.

We are unaccustomed to all being out together in a towny place. There is some fidgetting, pulling and whining , but we settle down, and it's warm enough to eat outside

Up the road, afternoon.

A small green metal plaque on an old outbuilding containing only an old tractor tyre at Boissy proclaims the third prize winner of the Breton horse brood mare categorie, 1993.

Up the road, afternoon.

'Called Paris today' said Marcel, 'it's my sister-in-law's hundredth birthday. Widowed in 1938.'

'Didn't she ever want to remarry?'

'Might have had a boyfriend or two, I dunno.'

Hill above Henon, afternoon (Wednesday).

There is a gentle languor about afternoons like this in March. The larkspur haze over everything, nothing visible beyond the next range of hills, the birds singing rather desultorily.

Plan d'eau, Plessala.

The small black dogrushes madly around in the shallow water of the lake, than stands at the edge, barking indignantly at the lapping waves which he has himself created.

Above the distant chatter of the invisible starlings down in the poplars, a thinner, harsher squeal comes out of the grass. Some small life, I suspect, is being violently extinguished.

Down the road, afternoon.

The Dutchman calls a greeting from the ordered stripes of yellow and purple, crocus and iris, where he kneels in the field, and tells me spring is started at last.

Trédaniel plan d'eau, afternoon

I don't bother to zip up my jacket, but hug it round me, arms folded tight over my chest, slouch along. Bad posture can be so comforting, like old clothes!

Up the road, afternoon.

After a big Sunday lunch, we need the exercise. It begins to rain just after we start, and we shelter under the ridiculous Doric columned portico of the factory office.

Up the road, afternoon

Thrushes' songs, purple-striped crocus pushing up out of the ground like fungus, primrose leaves pleated with life. I take the longer circuit, finally shake off self-pity back at my door.

Trédaniel plan d'eau, morning.

Robins sing in fluent concerto, pussy willow tentatively beads its twigs, and a clump of dotted frogspawn gel floats in the shallows.

Yet winter is loath to loosen its grip.

Trédaniel plan d'eau, afternoon.

Black-headed gulls, only one of which actually has a black head, paddle on the water like ducks, trailing wide v-shaped wakes behind them. They take flight indignantly when I sneeze.

Down the road, afternoon.

A wet Sunday, and we hadn't much cared to come out, but the rain has stopped, and it is mild and silvery, the road gleaming. Still, we don't stay long.