Spring sunshine and small comforts

Four weeks into lockdown and all our lives have taken on a new, slower, pace. If we are lucky enough to have a garden and in particular, to live near pleasant walking spaces, the recent sunny weather has been some sort of compensation for not seeing loved ones. My heart goes out to those without these, previously seemingly small things, but now so important. The arrival of Spring and the Easter weekend signal new beginnings and we look forward with hope to when this crisis will end. Meanwhile, I have found simple pleasure in the even quieter lanes we walk down, the cacophonous chorus of birdsong more noticeable now, and the green shoots and buds appearing in fields and on trees. It is not often we are fortunate enough to sit out under trees at Easter time and appreciate the slowly unfolding buds.

Whether or not you are able to experience firsthand this lovely Spring, I have also taken a great deal of comfort from reading books about the countryside, and its timeless, unchanging nature. There are also those comforting books that allow you to escape for a while without demanding too much from you. I wanted to share some of these with you and hope that you too may find some comfort and hope between their pages.

Whether or not you can escape into the country lanes or the local park, you can certainly experience it almost first hand in Hugh Thomson's The Green Road into the Trees; a walk through England. 2012)

Hugh Thomson has written many acclaimed books about walks through Peru, Mexico and the Himalayas but in this, his travels through his own country, he discovers the history, the forgotten places and the often unsung heroes of his own land. Walking across England from the Dorset coast, following the Ridgeway across the country to the Norfolk coast, he explores the way the country was,and the way it is today: the legends, literature and natural world, and the undercurrent of regret running throughout our history. He shows us how older, forgotten cultures such as the Celts, Saxons and Vikings, lie much closer to the surface than we think. His conversations with hippies, travellers and farmers bring humour to his tales and bring us close to our green and pleasant land. He has a particularly interesting Appendix on Stonehenge.

Fewer words, but perhaps more important ones, are the subject of Robert Macfarlane's The Lost Words, with achingly beautiful illustrations by Jackie Morris.

'Once upon a time, words began to vanish from the language of children. They disappeared so quietly that at first almost no one noticed - fading away like water on stone. The words were those that children used to name the natural world around them: acorn, adder, bluebell, bramble, conker - gone!'

Subtitled A Spell Book, this book came about with the discovery that these words, and many other simple ones describing the natural world, had been removed from the Oxford Children's Dictionary as 'no longer of interest to children'. This is a book not just to treasure but to use, with children or at any age, and is a source of inspiration in dark times.

For warmer, but still spring, sunshine, turn to Elizabeth von Amin's The Enchanted April.

Published in 1922, this is a witty and delightful depiction of what it is like to rediscover joy. Set in a small medieval castle above a bay on the Italian Riviera, it tells the tale of four very different women, all drawn to the shores of the Mediterranean that April. Lose yourself in the Italian sunshine and find comfort.

For a very different, but equally delightful, comfort read, try Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, by Winifred Watson and published in 1938. Reprinted in 2000 by Persephone Books, it was made into a hilarious romcom in 2008. It is an enchanting version of Cinderella, the blossoming of a rather nondescript, middle-aged lady who has always been afraid .. "all these years and she had never had the wicked thrill of powdering her nose.. And all because she lacked courage. Powder, thundered her father the curate, the road to damnation. Lipstick, whispered her mother, the first step on the downward path." Its's pure delight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeGeCEHPU-o

Some memoirs evoke a feeling of endless sunny days and the timelessness of nature. Though only true of the first chapter, Rose Tremain's Rosie evokes beautifully the comforting childhood memories of the countryside: "Around the house on the hill were spread two thousand acres of chalky farmland ..,across which .., on our Raleigh bicycles, we were allowed to roam. These fields and woods, in the 1950s, were some of the loveliest in England. It is not an exaggeration to say that we often felt our London existence to be a kind of exile, from which we longed to escape ..."

Though the rest of Rosie's childhood was less happy, the book is a fascinating read with the knowledge that its writer has become one of our most treasured, and talented authors.

Last, but certainly by no means least, I would like to recommend Stoner by John Williams as one of the most perfect books I have ever read, with such power and truthfulness, it is a novel to be savoured. Written in 1965 and 'rediscovered' in 2012, it is the life story of William Stoner who enters the University of Missouri at 19 to study agriculture. He becomes a teacher, he marries the wrong woman. His life is quiet, and after his death, his colleagues remember him rarely. Stoner tells of the conflicts, defeats and victories of the human race that pass unrecorded by history and reclaims the significance of an individual life. It is, quite simply, astounding.