Spring is traditionally the time of love. When the birds indulge in a cliche of twittering as they build nests and squabble over the mates. The daffodils nod in the light breeze and the sunshine beams down, thawing the winter chill, urging me to remove my thermals and show off some skin.
There is something about the time of year that makes me want to wander along leafy lanes, hand in hand with the one I love, talking of nothing, laughing at silliness. But where is the time for that?
Modern life, for all its labour saving devices and speedy methods of transport, seems to be very short on quality time. Too much to do, too many places to visit, too much money to be made, deadlines to be met, leaving, 'no time to stand and stare.'
Sometimes, I feel really stretched and just want to lay it all down, laze all day in the garden with a good book (somebody else's not mine) and let the day pass slowly and uneventfully. This rarely happens now. I gave all that up when I decided to write full time.
When the children were small and I was a stay at home mum, there was bags of time. Time for playing, time for reading to them, time for showing them small, wonderful things. I had no computer then and my stories were scribbled onto notepads to be laboriously typed up at some hazy time in the future. No pressure, no worries, just fun and lots of runny noses to wipe.
I suppose it's just a case of the past being rosier and I am happy to be a novelist. After all it's what I always dreamed of, sitting at a lovely desk, tapping out fabulous novels, earning a crust and a reputation as a writer. But, now I have all that, how I would love to take a month off, to enjoy the garden without feeling I should be at my desk; to set out a picnic lunch under the trees in the garden, fill a pool with water and listen to their happy voices while I slumber in the sun. The children are all grown up now and I, somehow, have become middle aged and the future that I always looked forward to is here, making me look wistfully backward.
But I live my past in my stories, not in the wildly passionate romances, there weren't too many of those, just a few that counted ... and mattered. But, every instance of my life, my thoughts, feelings, memories; they all show up from time to time and colour my work just as surely as they colour my future.
Have a good spring season everyone.
