Springing

So, I've had two offers to help organise the festival and the same two people, plus one more, offered to help with church sidesman duties. No one has yet offered to take on the flower rota and I'm not holding my breath. All I do is write up a chart for the year (starting at Easter) and leave it for people to put their names down. If no one puts their name down, there will be no flowers (I would clear away dead ones, of course). This hasn't happened yet, but I said from the start that I'll not remind people nor ask them.

There are six long-tailed tits in the garden. I love to see them. The other day, they were all on the broom (the shrub that is, not a brush) a few yards away from the window, and four of them are hopping about in Al and Dilly's garden now. A blackbird is building a nest in the ivy covering the fence outside the other window. I must clear surplus weed from the pond so that the frogspawn, when it comes, isn't sitting on it and tadpoles will have room to swim. The first daffodils are just out in the drive.

The other thing that marks the end of winter is the Denton Pantomime. This has been an annual event from 1984 and the same people arrange it, with most of the village joining in one way or another. This year they did a panto version of Midsummer's Night Dream, which was duly hilarious. The acting ranges from slightly wooden to very good and the script is excellent. Gill, the scriptwriter and director, was despairing on Sunday as no one knew their lines, but most of that had been ironed out by the first night - though a particularly funny moment came when someone paused, the prompter prompted and the actor said "what?" There wasn't much left of Shakespeare - though "Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania" proved too good a line to leave out - but the plot was all there and then some.

There's a cold east wind today, but the sun is out (rather belatedly; I had a cold ride to Yagnub this morning). I've said to Dilly and the children that I'll go swimming with them this afternoon, but if it's still sunny afterwards I'll do a bit in the greenhouse. I'm not ready to sow seeds yet, but maybe this weekend.