Exclamations

Oh, these long bright evenings! How is it possible to stay still, to stay indoors even, when outside the world is bursting into life and the sky won't relent and call a halt to the day until, at the moment, well after 8pm. In my late teens I used to get in my car and just drive, drive anywhere, sometimes until I ran out of petrol. Keep moving, don't stop, you'll exhaust your feelings eventually! At this time of year I've always found myself to be most alive when the day is mainly done, when any wind has settled down and the blackbirds find a handy tree and sing. Oh how unsettling it is! But how beautiful too, how seductive. Age is meant to bring a calming effect to these emotions, isn't it? but it doesn't, it doesn't. Luckily I have one thing to ground me when my senses threaten to run out of control: Hugo. I looked at him earlier, curled on the kitchen sofa in a deep sleep, a picture of relaxed bliss, and I said to him, Hugo, I'm so glad I have a dog to keep me company, to share my exuberance with. No, it's not just that, I added, it's that I'm so glad I have you. Imagine not having known Hugo!

Eventually the evening moves on and becomes just another part of the day and I can settle down to mundane things like cooking supper, doing the crossword, pulling out an Italian exercise book. It's still light outside, and lovely. The garden is a picture and a visit to the garden centre today garnered a load more exciting plants to mull over and relocate. I had a silver birch delivered from a local garden centre too, and that will beak up the lawn as the sorbus has already done. Courage, that takes, to dig a hole in the grass, but worth it. I've survived another maelstrom that is the spring evening. Tomorrow there will be another, and then another, and soon it will be their unbearably glorious relative the summer evening. A day at a time, that's how to take it. Hugo must have read my thoughts. He sat up and wormed his body towards me and crashed his head onto my chest, looking up into my face with a total absence of guile. Really, there are no words. Only gratitude.