THE birds are back... they deafen us with song from the big tree in the back garden and the two fat woodpigeons are balancing on their branch again, looking for all the world like Tweedledum n Tweedledee on a wall – teetering, about to tumble off at any minute.
Hoppy, our baby blackbird snatched from sure death at the claws and jaws of the vicious ginger cat, is back to say hello too.
He has been known to chirp at the windowsill when the boss is inside – just to get fed. And he is forever at my feet in the garden when I’m pegging out freshly washed clothes.
I feel like Dickon Sowerby, the little boy in The Secret Garden – a pet bird and a garden of my own – living the dream.
And we spied the small white fragments of a baby bird’s egg in the garden last week – fingers crossed the fledgling got away from those thievin’ magpies.
It’s the birdsong that is beautiful in the morning – that and the long finger of sunlight slanting through the blinds.
We have taken to our nightly circle walk of the block and meet our neighbours, out, just like us, going in the opposite direction in the round, drinking in the fresh air and the clear beauty of the evening sky as cherry and apple blossom trees cast confetti down the avenue.
Maybe some day we’ll follow the blossom right across Japan. I’m ready to go. Or take out our deck chairs, as the Japanese do, and sit underneath for a whole sunny afternoon, enjoying the play of light on the delicate pink petals, dreaming of spring weddings of long ago.
Funny how, when younger, you never understand the power of a long dark winter to strike a dull ache in the heart.
We feel like old bears stretching after a long dark sleep and moving out of the gloomy cave and into the light of a big yellow sun.
My light box in the corner has served its purpose. It’s a simple enough equation. Call it the McCann theory of summer. When the light shining in through the window is brighter than the light emanating from my box – why then it is time to switch it off and go outside.
My new pedometer has been shifted from its drawer too. It takes a little work. But it sports a little man who cheers wildly, waving his arms when I get to 10,000 steps – that’s about five miles to you and me.
“It’s not that far,” says a friend.
But hell, it feels like it to me. Must be the corns on my toes – you really don’t want to know. I didn’t, though I knew my feet ached. But someone I love took a photograph of the bits of toes I could not see and, yikes... it was a warning: “Get these to a podiatrist.”
Nevertheless, something in the air has us out and up and switching off the TV. Who needs a bus card when you can walk and walking is easy when the air doesn’t nip.
So the big bus is just for Saturday jaunts – with my nephew upstairs at the front as the city’s white churches and red brick halls and fancy shops whiz past on tight corners.
And the pool is also calling.
I was never one for the chlorine and the swimming lane experience and the sharp snap of a rubber bathing hat.
There have been times when alpha male swimmers have got my goat and I want to ask them what a friend once did: “Excuse me, do you own this pool?”
There are times when I’ve got caught up in the sauna with men who just want to talk – it’s like turning on a tap, they chat and chat and chat. It’s bizarre.
But there are times when I know I’ve fallen in love with swimming again.
Sitting at my desk, I imagine that moment when you turn in the water and push off from the side, gliding forward, skimming the water like a sleek otter – completely at home.
There is a pool with lots of glass in the roof that you can have almost to yourself on quiet days. It’s a secret and I’m not telling.
And I’m far from a wonderful swimmer.
“What’re you doing?” asks a friend from work.
“Twenty lengths, breast stroke,” I reply.
“Not good, go to 30 and do crawl,” he advises.
It’s a tall order.
But this is no competition.
It’s just me in the pool, breathing deeply, the slow steady movement of limbs and the beauty of sunlight casting a golden net on the water.
