Lamb & Ice Cream


Sun sifts through cloud, fattens up the buds on the blackthorn tree. It percolates; spring is the season of percolation. First lambs, born in the frost, are plumping up, new lambs have slithered into a green world, edged with budded hedges. It feels like wakefulness, after winter’s deep important dreaming. While the earth dreams, I am awake in the cold. When the sun arrives, I drowse in light and heat, my mind wanders like a curious breeze. Every experience has its own beauty. The buds of spring have obvious prettiness, conversely easy to take for granted. They require as much careful attention as anything that I observe.
My favourite season is always the one I’m in. But if I had to pick one, it would be the summer of 1976, because I was six and recall it all in Technicolour, garish, kitsch, hyper-real. Every day the sun shone, we swam in the sea and we ate ice cream. My swimsuit was the reddest object on the planet.

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