spring - Debbie Young's Writing Life

The Guinea Pig Has Left the Building

Posted on March 25, 2011July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

Brownie the guinea pig with Laura the Brownie

Daffodils in bloom – check. Wild garlic in full pungent flower at the roadside – check. Tiny white blossoms starring the bare branches of our plum trees – check. Children shrieking as they bounce up and down on the trampoline – check. Spring solstice (and my parents’ wedding anniversary) – check. But it’s still not officially spring in our household until another important ritual takes place.

In these confusing times of climate change, it’s not always easy to spot the season. My husband has just invested in a weather station to help us get our bearings. A neat white plastic box displays the current time, date, temperature, air pressure, humidity, cloud cover and precipitation. It gleans this information from a smaller white box with which it has some sort of remote communication. According to the weather station, we experienced a fabulous run of weather the first week after he bought it – until we realised that the smaller white box was meant to be placed out of doors, rather than on the other side of the kitchen.

But we have a more reliable indicator of the seasons. It’s small, brown and furry, and makes endearing cheeping sounds whenever we pass by. The volume increases in direct proportion to the volume of cucumber in our hands.

Brownie travels around according to the season. In the summer, she grazes all day on the lawn, safe under a vast chickenwire run, constructed by my husband for her enjoyment (he can’t bear to see an animal in a cage). When we go on our summer holiday, out comes her summer palace – a large but lightweight, portable plastic house that just about fits in the back of my Ford Ka. We take palace and pig to my brother or sister’s house, where Brownie enjoys the materialistic life of a city-dweller, spoiled with treats from the nearby pet superstore and trimmings from Marks and Spencer salad packs. Last year she came back from her summer holiday with a red and yellow pop-up tent. (No guinea pig should be without one.)

Then, when the nights start to get a little cooler, she migrates into the lean-to that we euphemistically call our conservatory. Once frost sets in, we move her properly indoors, where, in her summer palace again, she takes up residence on the utility room worktop. So begins a more sociable time of year for her. We have cheery conversations whenever I’m loading the dishwasher or doing the laundry, and she likes to throw in a few helpful comments as I iron my daughter’s school uniform in the morning.

But as the nights shorten, there comes a point when she must be yearning for fresh air again, and today she got her wish. I gave her outdoor hutch a good spring clean and doused it with disinfectant. I lined it with old copies of the Radio Times and a thick layer of hay, before scattering handfuls of the greens that are suddenly growing like Topsy in our back garden. Brownie squeaked her approval as I gently scooped her up with both hands and took her out the back door. The guinea pig has left the building. So spring is here at last.

Personal life

Spring Fever

Posted on March 1, 2011July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

It’s no wonder they call it Spring. All of a sudden things are springing up out of nowhere, as if someone’s put nature on fast forward without telling me.

How come I never noticed the snowdrops until they were in flower? They can’t have just appeared overnight fully formed. And did those daffodil shoots, now four inches high in my front garden, really pop up like a jack-in-the-box the minute my back was turned?

It’s not just flowers that have been miraculously materialising. When I took my daughter to her tap-dancing class yesterday afternoon, two sisters in her class had gained a baby brother since last week – and I hadn’t even noticed that their mother was pregnant. It’s bad enough that the weekly tap-dancing classes seem to take place every other day. To miss a whole human gestation period is beyond the pale.

At this rate, I had better make sure I get out and about in the next few days, or before I know it, the wild garlic and primroses will have come and gone. Those unlikely roadside bedfellows are my favourite sign of spring. I’d hate to miss my annual treat of driving down the country lanes with open windows, invigorated by the pungent spring air. And I can’t get by without seeing that gorgeous blue carpet that will be unrolling in local woodlands any day now. The delicate scent transports me back to the spring of my childhood, when no classroom was complete without a jamjar crammed with bluebells on every windowsill. It doesn’t make sense to me that in the days when we were all allowed to pick them to our hearts content, there was never any shortage of wild flowers.

Blink, and I’ll miss the violet haze of flax that briefly rests, gossamer-like, over too few fields round here. It’s such a welcome respite from the garish, choking rape that seems to take over the countryside for a few weeks each spring, like a horrible bully that wants everything its own way.

In no time at all I’ll be wondering whether I’m too late to admire the sumptuous pinks and mauves of the Arboretum’s rhododendrons. Nor do I want to miss the spindly-legged lambs skittering about fields that were once home only to sluggish, chubby sheep. All too soon they’ll have turned into sturdy teenage sheep waiting their turn to go to market.

The trouble is, when you live in an area like this all year round, it’s all too easy not to notice what tourists travel miles to see. If your chief shopping destination is the Coop rather than the Highgrove shop, and your shopping list is for groceries rather than rare antiques, you’re bound to have a different perspective on the local landscape.

So when are they going to mend all these potholes?

(This post originally appeared in the Tetbury Advertiser, March 2011)

Personal life

Springing into Summer

Posted on March 1, 2011July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

Daffodil of spring. — Image via Wikipedia

The best thing that can be said for February is that it has only 28 days. It’s always been my least favourite month. So I shall be very glad when the March parish mag drops onto my doormat. Not so my husband: as he was born on 1^st March, the end of February heralds that he’s aged another year. But for me there is NOTHING good about February.

By contrast, what’s not to love about March? The official start of spring, daffodils, green buds on trees, primroses, lambs. Simple but satisfying traditional celebrations: Pancake Day, Mother’s Day, and the Spring Solstice. And none of them will break the bank.

The Spring Solstice, incidentally, is my parents’ wedding anniversary. 21^st March has always struck me as such a hopeful, optimistic date for a wedding, and it’s served them well for 58 years so far.

Then at the end of the month, the icing on the cake: the clocks spring forward – the moment we’ve been waiting for all winter.

But if the thought of March cheers you up, just wait till we get to April. Suddenly, it’ll feel like the summer. And I’m not talking about the weather. With so many public holidays, April will be the new August. A full fortnight off school will segue into the two Easter bank holidays, then the children will be back at school for just three days before another four day weekend courtesy of Prince William. It’s so considerate of him to book his wedding adjacent to the May Day holiday. Now there’s a man intent on restoring the Royal Family’s popularity.

Well, after the winter we’ve just had, we certainly deserve a decent summer. Bring it on!

(This post originally appeared in the March 2011 Hawkesbury Parish News)

Family, Personal life

May Day

Posted on May 1, 2010July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

For me, the concept of May Day will be forever associated with an annual ritual that took place at my infant school in Sidcup, a Kentish suburb of London.

Each May Day, or the closest school day to it, the girls from the oldest class became “May Maidens”. We had to dress in white frocks and the prettiest girl (how un-PC is that?!) was crowned May Queen. A determined band of mothers raided everyone’s gardens for roses and greenery to make into wreaths for the Maidens’ hair. They also wove two long floral ropes for the Maidens to carry.

The May Day Procession

For the May Day ceremony, the whole school turned out onto the field. ‘The Elizabethan Serenade’ played over the tannoy, while two lines of May Maidens, each carefully carrying one of the ropes, processed slowly to the far end of the field. Then they stood still while the May Queen and two attendants proceeded down the length of this floral aisle. Once the May Queen had taken her place on her throne, the Maidens sat down on the grass and the Headmistress addressed the gathered crowd of parents and children.

I don’t remember what the boys had to do, but they must have found the whole thing pretty dull. Not so the mothers, who ooh’d and aah’d as we walked by, snapping away with big, boxy cameras.

Those were gentler days, I think to myself, wishing that my own small daughter had the chance to take part in such an idyllic ritual. But then I realise with a start that the backdrop to this quaint ceremony was far from idyllic. For behind where the May Maidens sat, all along the edge of the school field, was a long row of air-raid shelters. Though the war was over long before we May Maidens were born , most of the adults watching our procession would have been all too familiar with the inside of an air-raid shelter.

A Sheltered Life?

Me, centre, aged 6, as a May Maiden on the school field — Funn how it seems it was always summer when I was a child…

These days it is hard to imagine that Health and Safety inspectors would allow any school to have such dark, dingy, unlit sheds on the school field. Risk assessment for air raid shelters? There’s an interesting thought. In those days, of course, children were allowed to enjoy a little danger, but I’m sure that’s not the only reason the shelters were retained. I suspect there was an inkling that we might needed to use them again. This was, after all, the 1960s. The Cold War was in full swing. Even as recently as 1980, the government was issuing its infamous “Protect and Survive” leaflets, telling us how to guard against a nuclear attack. (Unbelievably, top tips were to sit under the kitchen table or to take a door off its hinges if a table wasn’t to hand.)

We live in more peaceful times. My daughter may not get to be a May Maiden, but at least I don’t have to worry about a bomb falling on her school. All the same, she’d look awfully pretty with roses in her hair.

(This post originally appeared in the Tetbury Advertiser, May 2010)

Personal life, Travel

Let the Sunshine In

Posted on April 13, 2010July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

What a difference a week of sunshine makes! On returning home yesterday after our walking holiday in Wales, the first thing I notice is that my front garden seems to have exploded.

In a good way, I mean. Having suddenly appeared from nowhere is a deep pink curtain of flowering currant blossom, theatrically suspended above the front wall from a bush that seemed so much smaller when its branches were bare. Behind the wall, what had before my departure been bare soil is now festooned with a tangle of deliciously bright lime-green leaves. This blanket of ground cover is dotted with the violet starbursts of periwinkle flowers.

In the back garden what first catches my eye is a triffid-like mass of rhubarb that I swear wasn’t there last week. A mini forest of thick deep stems, marbled green and pink, underpin a volcanic eruption of sturdy curling leaves which look far more healthy and vibrant than should be allowed for something so notoriously poisonous. Closer to hand, the grassy bank immediately behind the house is peppered with yellow and russet primroses, little joyous bursts of colour, random as sparks from fireworks. Nearby, ancient plum, chestnut and apple trees that looked quite dead just a week ago now bear thick buds, their fruit apparently under starters’ orders.

Forget the holiday laundry, I think to myself, abandoning on the utility room floor the armfuls of clothes that I’ve just brought in from the camper van. We’d better get straight out into that garden and take charge, before it gets the wrong idea of who’s in control here. There’s clearly not a moment to lose.

I stride back through the house to call my husband who is busy detaching the bikes from the back of the van. The sun is sending beams as strong as spotlights through the flowering currant and into the living room, and I suddenly realise that it’s not only the plants that have multiplied at logarithmic rate while we’ve been away. I run my finger along the top of the piano. Yes, the same has happened to the dust.

Oh well, at least I had a rest on holiday.