Spring Thoughts

Mornings start deep and crisp and even here. A metal boat in chilly water really reminds you that the nip of winter is refusing to bugger off entirely, but once the sun gets going, spring feels like it’s finally happening. I am quite and quietly excited about it.

A good barometer is whether the cats of the marina are up and about and the great awakening of Queen Susan this weekend was a sign that might be an omen. I love her so much and she doesn’t give a fuck, which is exactly as it should be.

I have been taking daily walks again, and today was the first day I was able to venture forth without my coat, which was wonderful. I say walks, they’re more of a gentle amble around my manor. I spend quite a lot of time sitting on benches, tilting my face to the sun and letting the world go by. This last winter has really depleted my resources and I am allowing myself to rise with the sap rather than run with anything at all.

Today I went to Trinity Wharf and after having magnificent French toast replete with lion faced pansies and slivers of crisp, smoked bacon at Layers, I went and sat by the water for a while.

One of the old East India Company basins is now a bird sanctuary. Off one of the fat curves of the Thames, opposite the O2 Centre, it sits behind a mazy weft of chunky lock gates, sandwiched between a housing estate, the A12 and the River Lea. It’s not a beautiful space. Its speciality is mud. Because of where it’s situated and how the locks filter it has become silted up over the decades since it fell out of use by humans.

It’s one of those spaces that reminds me of the brilliant Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn, where she explores natural spaces that have been ruined by the hand of man, but which allow wildlife, flora and fauna to flourish.

This muddy liminality that gleams like silk when the light hits right is just such a space. It is one of only a few areas of salt marsh in an urban environment in the UK and attracts all kinds of birds who come to feed in the rich, silty water. Today I sat and listened to them plocking across the mud. The noise of them sifting the silt through their beaks sounded like a convention of soup drinkers, and the smell of warm mud reminded me of childhood.

Migraines continue to be a feature of my life. I’m doing a lot of internal spring cleaning, so this doesn’t surprise me too much, except at 3.00 a.m. when I wake convinced I have a brain tumour. My eyes are not working particularly well either. This started happening a couple of years ago and I have regular checks with my optometrist who looks for all the ooh narsty stuff and just tells me that I am old and knackered and now that I am in my varifocals era my brain is finding it hard to switch between near and far away, Dougal. I say varifocals era as if I were a cut price Taylor Swift. That will be the tour where she misjudges where the edge of the stage is and goes crowdsurfing by accident, all the way to Specsavers.

Today I sat in the sun and thought about how nice it was to not have to layer up. I let my bones shift down a gear from high alert. I closed my eyes for a while and let the sunshine write patterns on the insides of my eyelids. I reminded myself that it might look like nothing, but inside I’m stirring up a lot of mud. In it will be all kinds of nutrients and maybe I’ll only realise what that nourishment is when the clouds have settled, and sometimes I’ll only know that when I sit in the sun and let nature do its job knowing I’ve done mine.