The cow parsley’s already tall enough to tickle Bertie’s ears, which is my usual cue that we’re slipping into the tail end of spring. I swear it’s earlier every year — or maybe I’m just getting slower to notice the change. James insists it’s because I always get distracted talking to strangers in the bakery queue instead of looking where I’m walking. He’s probably right.
The mornings are still chilly, but there’s that hopeful hum in the hedgerows. Birdsong that feels like it’s reaching its crescendo. Everything is so green — you forget, when you’ve spent the winter watching olives turn grey in the Spanish sun, just how loud an English hedge can be in May.
Pickering’s waking up too. Tourists with sensible rucksacks and ice creams far too early in the day, small children dropping crumbs for pigeons outside the bookshop, and the local painters all setting up their easels like it’s a plein air championship. There’s a man doing watercolours of the railway bridge who I swear hasn’t moved in three days. I offered him a banana. He declined.
This bit of the year always makes me a little restless. Like I’m borrowing the days. We’ll be heading back to Spain soon enough, once the last round of laundry is done and we’ve seen the grandkids again (assuming they’re not too busy with sleepovers and TikToks and whatever else they’re growing into these days).
James is already listing jobs to do at the house in Spain. Apparently, the grapevine’s gone wild and the sunblinds need re-threading. I’ve stopped pretending I know what “re-threading” means. I nod at the right bits, and get back to my tea.
But for now, we’re here. The boots are still muddy from yesterday’s walk past Cropton, the garden’s overrun with those little white butterflies I can never name, and the house smells faintly of peat smoke and lemon washing-up liquid.
There’s a kind of stillness in late spring. A breath held. The feeling you get before the moors turn purple and the roads get too busy and we pack up the car with too much marmalade. I quite like it. It feels like home — not the kind you own, but the kind that grows quietly around you when you’re not paying attention.
Bertie’s snoring now. Full of roast chicken and tired from squirrel patrol. James is asleep too, chair tipped back slightly, paper still open on the crossword. I think I’ll leave them both to it. The last of the light’s turning gold through the window.
And if I sit very still, I can hear the trains down at the station, rattling their way through the countryside like time itself doesn’t mind being late once in a while.
