Changing Seasons

Driving to work, the sky is blanketed in a puffy quilt of pink and purple. Beneath it, the sun is a ribbon of pale gold melting into a Cambridge blue. Palm trees loom darkly on the fringes of the road. Houses are black save for the brilliance reflected in their windows. The morning traffic lurches forward sleepily, unpredictably. Horns blare. There are moments of beauty like this every day. Shimmering gold caught in the bedroom curtains after a storm. Sunlight straining through the tree outside the kitchen window, falling in puddles into the leaves of my fern, casting bright sequins across the cupboard and wall. A harvest moon so huge and heavy it is almost falling out of a perfectly still sky. One day we get home just early enough to take Asterix for a walk: the sun is setting as we run across the playing field. The air smells of woodsmoke, eucalyptus leaves and damp grass, the trees are a cacophony of birds. You can almost sense the change of seasons in the air. Today on our walk the sky is grey and the tide is out, mangroves merging into long stretches of mud. But we turn the corner to find a field of white Spring Snowflakes dancing in the wind.

In the evenings, we cook comfort food. French onion soup. Stuffed peppers. Homemade burgers. Baked Camembert and roasted Parmesan cabbage. One day we get dinner with friends. It’s a small cosy bolthole tucked away on a rowdy road, it must barely seat twenty. Coats and scarves are hung over one another by the door, the light fittings are cut from wine bottles, bright tea light flames flicker on each table. At the bar a giant plant with broad leaves reaches up to the ceiling. The food is delicious; there is commotion and much laughter when a napkin catches fire – water thrown, voices teasing, the sharp smell of smoke drawing attention to our table, probably already too loud. We go home happy and a little too drunk; the next day we are drained and deplete. For the rest of the week I make hot water bottles after work and get into bed early, but it seems impossible to recharge.

Slowly I am becoming more social again. I get dinner with a friend I last saw before the lockdown. We eat in an american style place in Sylvia Park, I dress for comfort in an old university hoody and jeans. When we go to pay, the waiter questions me about Cambridge: I lived there for a couple of years, he says. We talk at odds for a while, trying to make sense of what the other is saying, before realising that we are thinking about different places: he means the Cambridge in Waikato. I have driven through it a couple of times, but that is the extent of my knowledge. The conversation peters out. I catch up with another friend on the eve of her first registrar job. We sit tucked away at the back of a pub, we order mulled wine and fries. We laugh over memories, we share anxieties, both of us probably too wrapped up in ourselves to really be able to reassure the other. It is enjoyable and exciting to eat out again, to see friends in any context other than work, but also somehow exhausting. As though I have lost the knack, am out of practice. One weekend I go round to my old flat. We sprawl over the couches and in front of the fire drinking tea and eating ice cream as rain and wind batter the windows. This feels much more comfortable, much less draining.

I have been reading a lot. I have a pile of non-fiction waiting for me, but my mind right now craves stories and escape. One weekend K and I make a trip to a bookshop. It is full of students with colourful hair and heavy knit jumpers talking loudly about the classes they plan to take next term. Somebody brings a baby spaniel in: he sniffs eagerly at everyone’s ankles and sets about to destroy the rug on the floor. His owners introduce him as Charlie, but when they scold him they call him Charles.

Does anyone else go back to old to-do lists and cross things off just because it feels good to do so? Since February I have been meaning to find time to write to an old friend from my early undergraduate days. We were children back then, I still have all of our letters in a fat envelope. It might have taken me months to find the right moment, but once I start writing the words flow, spilling over pages, and I can barely stop. How do you find time to write? I am working on carving out a consistent window in the morning before work. Evenings are unpredictable: work can run late, the day can leave me exhausted. Besides which exams are back on, and I need to seriously start studying again.

At work: more of the same, never the same. The guards at the entrance (instated to enforce the COVID visiting restrictions) offer a constant cheerful chorus as we filter through, bleary-eyed: “Good Morning! Have a great day! Be happy!”. I am covering a team based on my old home ward: it feels so nice to be working with people I know well: I’m more relaxed, confident in what I’m doing. Still every day there is something new, something to learn.

Finally daffodils are here. Magnolias are in full bloom. The cherry trees on our road are all starting to blossom, a deep dark joyful pink. It has felt like forever coming, but Spring is finally on its way.

Sending you my love as ever,