The return of Spring

And such is the English climate.

We were revelling in the latest set of unprecedentedly warm conditions. In the belief that, even in mid-May, Summer had already set in. Before his latest trip to the United States, Hnaef had celebrated a whole series of barbecues. We haven't yet defined barbecues as religious festivals, but in the triumph they display of faith over evidence and experience, and the wholesale evidence of burnt offerings, we think that we may be on to something.

As I write tonight, the showers are glancing off the conservatory roof. Out across the Great Lawn, a few members of the Hnaefist Order of Beaker Folk are struggling to light a barbecue. That the tray is full to overflowing with rainwater does not seem to stop them. For a short while I considered getting the fires lit tonight - but I have decided to preserve the fuel until we really need a fire, in August

There is no doubt in my mind, as I glance at my mud-encrusted Wellington boots, that Spring is back. We celebrated summer i-cumen in on May 1, and now things are going backwards. It is often the way with the English weather, of course.

I look out of the East side of the conservatory, and I see the stalls that Drayton's people had set up for their Church Fete on Saturday being blown away and down into the brook. And I smile a little. We are in England. And everything is normal.