Things About Which I Am Inexplicably Melancholy (Or 'February')

• London, bulbs that I cradled with my ungloved hands, pushed firmly into cold wet soil alive with worms, wrapped gently in a coat of clay and compost, bulbs pushing shoots up through the fallen leaves of the 15 foot bay tree, in the shadow of our red brick terrace, without me.

• Our flat in Glasgow, that it is still there but it will never be ours again. The huge windows pouring light over bare floorboards, the open shelves in the kitchen where my beautiful things sat and collected dust, the train rattling through the garden making said beautiful things shake slightly, the leaves of trees blowing in the wind beneath us, living high in the rainclouds. The place where I recovered from operations, injected myself with hormones, brought my babies home from the hospital and watched them grow. 

• Spring time in Edinburgh, pink and white blossom falling from the hundreds of trees that line the Meadows, tiny ballerinas showering the heads of people rushing to and from work, babies sleeping in pushchairs, dogs sniffing at lamposts. Spring time in France, the day when you are driving to the shop and all of a sudden there are the brightest green leaves where before were just row upon endless row of bare brown vines. Spring time every place that has trees.  

• That bit of dead rabbit on the way to the beach that Lyra tries to make off with every time we walk past, only recognisable as a former rabbit by the one long soft ear still attached to the otherwise furless, fleshless bag of bunny offal hanging from a splayed skeleton.

• Our kite, dashed from the sky during an attempt to be the kind of parent who says 'yes' to things, not 'maybe another time, when daddy is here'. Slammed repeatedly against the ground by the capricious, violent wind, pounced on by the dog, yelled at by the children, its horizontal strut snapped right in two. 

• My children, growing and getting bigger and learning to read and write. Once they can read and write what will they need me for? The world will be theirs.

Happy long weekend lovers. The chances of me writing this week's Doing, Reading, Listening with Widdle and Puke at home, bouncing off the walls and asking me to do stuff with them are pretty low so I'll see you next week, when maybe I'll have finished a book!