Spring in Cambridge
(… and the photos to prove it are up under “New and Old”)

The blossom is out on the trees, and gusting in little white flurries across the roads. The garden beds edging the college courts are gutters of colour, orange, yellow and ochre. The first shorts-wearers and sun-dresses have been sighted. Pallid floppy-haired Englishmen can be seen cycling in light linen jackets and, rather lamentably, checked pink shirts. More sensible women are still wearing the winter-season’s coats of phone-box red. Sun dapples the riverside beer gardens by the river with sprays of shadow and new-minted coins of light, as late as eight each evening. The air is tense with the expectation of that first thunder-crack snap of leather on willow.

By sheer force of contrast, after the washed out bleak dreariness of the English winter I’m beginning to understand the stature of Spring in English literature. That said, randomly rising and falling winds and variable durations of sunshine mean one can plausibly wear anything from a t-shirt and three quarter pants to an overcoat and jeans without looking out of place.

It seems too dreadful for words to be indoors studying.

(Though of course, since writing this, it has helpfully started to rain.)