WE return to Ireland to find the weather as sunny as that which we enjoyed on the Mediterranean during our recent visit.

AS we walked across the north Ibiza landscape, it was 29°C and even the lizards were seeking the shade.

DISPATCHES, via text messages to this relatively remote Mediterranean island which I am re-visiting, assure me that the young heron which we adopted a fortnight ago is alive, robust and growing in all directions.

IT is four weeks since we read that the first swallow had been sighted — nevertheless, it’s always a thrill and a reassurance to see them once again splitting one’s local skies.

I HAVE A friend in Tokyo who says she’s unworried by the regular aftershocks.

THE weather has been so sunny in the week since we’ve arrived back from the Canary Islands that we could top up our suntans, had we nothing else to do.

THE advances in nature in Ireland during our 30-day absence are striking but it is that time of year when, almost overnight, buds open and the bush which, yesterday, was bare branches, suddenly wears a shawl of green.

SIX weeks ago, on January 16., an 84-year-old Englishman set out on a raft, built here in La Gomera in the Canary Islands, to drift 2,800 miles across the Atlantic to Eleuthera Island in Bahamas, tracing the route upon which a ship’s 18-foot long jolly boat carried the survivors of the 41 crew of an English cargo vessel sunk by a German ship disguised as a merchantman (but then drawing back the deck-cowlings to reveal cannons and machine guns) during World War 11.

IT ISN’T all blue skies in the Canary Islands.