Walk on wild side puts spring in step

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.

However, I find it most satisfying to be busy and wouldn’t know how to spend my time if I couldn’t find something worthwhile turning to. Maybe that’s suspect, and I should get my head examined — other folk might say, if you’re looking for something to turn to turn the other side of your face to the sun. But it keeps me happy. And now that I’ve finished the various books I was lucky enough to be asked to write in 2010 and 2011, I am gloriously free to footer about on various projects which some might call, quite justifiably, ‘pastimes’.

Walking is one of them. Today, it was down through the woods and along the cliffs over the sea. My wife had said the woods smelled of garlic, so I thought I’d go and see if the ramsons were in bloom. Not yet, but some of the heads will open shortly. Meanwhile, they look like the chrysalis of various butterflies and, especially, of cinnabar moths, parchment-like envelopes one finds attached to tall grass stems later in the year.