Transportation

Driving to and from Halesworth in full sunshine on Friday after a gap of three weeks, it was a shock to see how advanced the spring was already. Lambs skeetered around the estate grounds, showing up their unimaginative mothers who just chewed grass and gawped. Remind me to never become a sheep. Blossom bedecked the trees and daffodils strung around village gardens brought light to the dull earth. Ten miles north of me, can it actually be warmer here? Or perhaps more sheltered? Whatever, it was a cheering sight, and I wished like mad that I hadn't agreed to sit indoors for three hours playing bridge. After a dull grey morning when the eclipse might as well not have happened, it felt like a miracle.

Yesterday was dull again and freezing, a northerly wind tearing across the countryside disturbing everything it encountered, including me when I stepped outside to bring the bin back from the road. For two days running I've been without the crossword as The Times printed an old one online. The first time I tried it took me two clues before I realised I'd done it the day before. So instead I tackled hotel quantities of white bed linen on the ironing board while Ireland thrashed Scotland in the final Six Nations match and eventually won the Triple Crown. I love Saturdays like this, watching the match while bringing duvets and pillow cases back into submission. My airing cupboard looks lovely again. I'm ready for the next visitors.

And so I ended the day back at Snape for a concert of Masses, one by Haydn, the other Faure. First I treated myself to supper in the bar - beef pie and a glass of red wine - and for the first time in donkey's years I felt slightly uncomfortable dining alone. It might have been because I knew a few people there, and they were with large parties. I thought I looked a bit odd by myself. So I resorted to texting friends to entertain myself and, more importantly, look entertained. Ridiculous! I spent 20 years eating for the Restaurant Guide, relishing solitary meals when I would pull out a book or a crossword and savour every mouthful, or most of them. I love going to concerts or the opera alone, and often do so by choice. So I surprised myself last night. But the music was intoxicating, and the contralto in the Nelson Mass, Angela Simkin, is one to watch. I was transported. And it was worth any amount of discomfort to experience that.