Tag: spring

Posted in Family, Personal life

Time to Readjust

Posted on by Debbie Young
An old style alarm clock.
Image via Wikipedia

Since leaving my 9-5 job in February, my body clock has been quietly readjusting.  No longer do I wake up a minute before the alarm sounds, nor do I habitually go upstairs at 11pm, programmed to fall asleep the minute my head hits the pillow.  Instead, my bedtime is creeping back, getting later and later.  I’m having way too much fun to want to go to bed.

This subconscious readjustment has always happened during my two-week Christmas break.  By the end of the fortnight, I reach my natural state: waking refreshed around 9am and hitting the hay around 1am. Holiday over, I ditch my body clock and take my cue instead from the radio alarm, permanently tuned to Radio 4.  Listening sleepily to whatever is on, I can tell whether we are running late.  Farming talk: safe to doze.  News headlines:  jump up and get busy.  Sports Report: overslept, but I can still make it to work on time if I hurry. Thought for the Day: I’m in big trouble.  Putting the clocks forward or back at the end of March, as we have just done, has never affected my sleeping habits, so long as I’ve remembered to adjust the radio alarm (and John Humphrys had done the same to his).

Now that I’m liberated from my job, I’d rather do away with my watch and my radio alarm and listen to my body clock instead.  Now I no longer have to get to the office by a fixed time, I just wander into my study when I’m ready and take a seat at my desk.  Surely following my body clock must make for a healthier lifestyle.

After all, it’s not that long since it was common practice across the country to take the time directly from the sun.  It was only the construction of the London-Bristol railway that caused this part of the country to reset its timepieces to match the capitol’s.  Apparently, we were far enough west for our day to run 11 minutes behind central London’s. This would have made the first London-Bristol train timetables bewildering, were it not for the fact that the newly built Temple Meads Station helpfully offered passengers two clocks, one showing local time, the other “Railway Time”, i.e. 11 minutes earlier.

Unfortunately, there is just one small obstacle that will stop me from giving full free rein to my body clock:  my daughter still has to get to school by half past eight.  So it looks as if my household will also have to keep two clocks, one for London time, the other for Debbie time.  I wonder if I can persuade Hawkesbury School to do the same?

This post was originally published in the April 2010 issue of the Hawkesbury Parish News.

Posted in Personal life

Harbingers of Spring

Posted on by Debbie Young

So Spring is late this year, as the weathermen keep telling us – though you hardly need a degree in meteorology to have worked that one out.

Snowdrops, usually well over by now, are still going strong, and we’ve yet to witness the cheery yellow splashes of daffodils that follow, at least in my hilltop Cotswold village.  But today is the first official day of Spring.  Will that really make a difference?  Does Nature take much notice of red tape?

Well, the first indicator in Spring’s favour is that it’s dry enough to make it worth pegging washing on the line. Then our next door neighbour’s children (and their dog) scramble over the garden wall for the first time this year. They venture with my daughter into her outdoor playhouse, untouched since the autumn, barring a quick spider-check by me.  The Famous Four then have a valiant stab at playing with the sand table, still thoroughly waterlogged with snow-melt.

But for me the strongest sign that Spring might at last be on the way materialises as I prepare Hot Cross Buns for tea – an act that will outrage traditionalists this side of Easter, even though the supermarkets have been touting them since they marked their Christmas mince pies down for quick sale. But I do like Hot Cross Buns.

I take the lid off the butter dish ready for the onslaught.  With my right hand I grab a knife from the draining board; my left hand hand grips the edge of the block of butter, ready for a struggle.  To my surprise, the knife slips gently down through the butter and I am able to spread it evenly and effortlessly across the ready-sliced buns.  Who needs thermometers and barometers when you have a butter dish?

Perfectly soft butter: now that’s what I call a  harbinger of Spring.

Posted in Personal life

Spring Cleaning

Posted on by Debbie Young

As the early spring sunshine streams in through my daughter’s bedroom window, I scoop up a half-dressed Barbie from the floor.  Tidying her bedroom is going to be a lengthy job.  ­­­­To imagine the state of her room at this stage, picture what would happen if you took a giant food blender, filled it with hundreds of  toys, then started the motor without putting the lid on.  You get the idea.

I’ve tried blaming her father.

“I think Laura has inherited your tidiness gene,” I tell him.

“I don’t think I’ve got one,” he says.

“Exactly my point.”

My mother thinks it’s my fault:

“When you were her age, I had to bribe your big sister to tidy your room.”

At least I didn’t have such a huge quantity of toys to put away.  I could count the number of dolls I possessed on one hand, whereas Laura would need a football team to ensure sufficient fingers.  I had just three shelves of books and knew every page practically by heart; many of Laura’s dozens of books have barely been opened.  My pencil case was a lone creature, but my daughter’s apparently flock.  To me, a good collection of colouring pencils meant a set of 10, whereas hers run to about a hundred.  As to felt tip pens, I think they breed after dark.  My heart leaps each time one runs out, because it means I can throw one in the bin with a clear conscience, but still they multiply.

I remember the invention of felt tips when I was small and the excitement of buying my first pack which held just four. They were expensive, costing two shillings, and I paid with the pre-decimal pennies that my grandfather used to save for me in a jar – a special treat to help fill the void between Christmas and birthdays.

So where do all Laura’s toys come from?  Free activity packs at family restaurants certainly account for the stationery glut.  Another new source is the charity shop.  There were none my local high street when I was a child, but now they spring up all over the place.  Don’t get me wrong, I applaud them – they do a fabulous job, fundraising and recycling at one fell swoop.  Shopping in them is a very easy way to support a worthwhile charity, so I tend to give Laura free rein.  Progressing now on hands and knees through the carpet of toys in her bedroom, I realise that this is my undoing.

In my day, old toys weren’t taken to the charity shop but went into the dustbin (we didn’t worry about landfill in the 60s) or were collected for scrap by the rag-and-bone-man.    This was the fate of my beloved push-along Baa-Lamb when I was about 4, and I’ve never forgiven my mother.

These days, old toys never die – they just relocate to Laura’s bedroom.

Happy Spring Cleaning!

(This blog entry originally appeared in the Tetbury Advertiser, March 2010)

Posted in Personal life

Walking On Sunshine

Posted on by Debbie Young
On the first sunny day of the Spring, I fall into the trap that awaits all freelancers: distraction from my work.  When my next door neighbour invites me to join her and her dog for a walk, I can’t resist.
Soon we are enjoying a delightful stroll through a local valley.  Although we are not exactly exerting ourselves,  it is so warm that we stride along with our jackets wrapped around our waists, gloves and hats redundant in our pockets.  The cloudless blue sky and warm sunshine convince us that we’ve skipped a month or two and we half expect to see blossom on the trees.  On our return home, we lounge on a garden bench, savouring a cup of tea and admiring her newly laid patio and planning suitable spring planting schemes.

Around lunchtime, I slink back to my desk, muscles tingling, cheeks glowing, but feeling distinctly guilty for bunking off so early in the week.  The guilt is fuelled by the knowledge that before long I’m due up at my daughter’s school to attend a talk by the local council’s Play Officer.  He delights us all by telling us that Health and Safety jobsworths have been sent packing, and in a remarkable volte-face, the council will now be positively encouraging children to take risks at play.  Only games that offer a risk of death will be off limits.

“If a school doesn’t produce a broken limb every now and again, it probably means they’re not offering the right kind of play,” he assures us.

And there is better yet to come.

“It is now scientifically proven that free play causes the body to release a hormone that stimulates brain development.”

Now that is good news. I can scientifically justify having skived off for my sunny morning walk: it was all in the cause of boosting my creativity.  It might even count as training.  I think I like this man.  I just hope it’s not my daughter that gets to break a leg.