A Warm Day

If there is an Oscar for the most nihilist film ever made, The Banshees - which is now on DVD, so I've finally seen it - will have no competition. Almost two hours in which the only justifiable act is suicide, as an honest, selfless response to the dashing of hopes, the loss of dreams and the disintegration of heroes into dust. The movie is a silent scream of futility into the blackness of an empty universe. It is universally praised, of course

Somebody else put it better than me, a while ago (I didn't know he'd seen the movie)...

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

Of course, I get it. We all face this terrifying space between our birth and our death. We are required to fill it, and justify what we did to ourselves, or ours gods, if we have any. And it's perfectly reasonable to conclude, as a character in Banshees put it, that "we're all just entertainin' ourselves until the inevitable". It's honesty of a kind, and courageous in its way

But we walked out today with our family, sharing stories of the past and hopes for the future, watching the bees for a while - they are excited that dandelions have started flowering now the snow has gone, getting our boots claggy with sticky mud and then clean again, and then more mud. We went in search of mad March hares, and found a dozen or more, we saw the first celandines, we found a single guinea fowl feather, as delicate as thistledown, we laughed at the foolishness of putting a "no trespassing" sign beside a footpath style

We got home to surprise visitors - a friend we used to lift in and out of the bath when they were were too small to do it themselves, bringing their first child to pull my beard and try out their first tooth on my thumb, and smile at Mrs M just like everyone else does. And then a family celebration and presents and oops we forgot to light the candles and laughter and too much food. And, later, goodbye and safe journeys and thank you for that and "what a lovely day"

Signifying nothing?

The flowering currant is our indicator species: once it is properly in flower it is time for "the first inspection" - the inauguration of the new beekeeping season when we discover whether our work last autumn to prepare the colonies for winter was adequate, and how they have fared in their solitary darkness. In the snows of last week, it seemed far away; seeing this today, it suddenly seems much closer. Something about the explosive energy of that new leaf makes the prospect exciting