Springing forward

Last weekend was gloriously spring-like: uninterrupted sunshine, temperatures in high single or low double figures, no wind. There is still snow on the ground and ice covers almost all of the Canal. But all sidewalks are bare and dry, and spring is definitely in the air. Everybody has a spring in their step and a song in their heart too. This was evident when I strolled along the nearby streets and everyone I saw was nodding and smiling, often exchanging a few words of greetings or even a brief conversation. When it's really cold and blustery, everybody is insulated with winter coats, hats, scarfes covering them from top to toe and nobody has time or spare energy for such niceties. Longer days and more sunshine lift the spirits too and have undoubtedly helped lift my spirits, draw me up and out of the trough of sadness and gloom in which I've languished since Wendy died -- since well before Wendy died to be accurate; the photos of us in the last few months of Wendy's life don't show me looking happy or smiling. Of course daylight saving time came in earlier than it used to, a legacy of the Bush presidency, one of the ways he chose to be warlike. (A BBC interviewer recently asked George W Bush if in his view, the USA still occupies the moral high ground it once did -- in the days, for instance, of FDR. Bush was unable to face the question, didn't attempt to answer it). Lately I've been distracted from the long drawn out process of clearing up Wendy's papers and art work by the pleasant task of reading and constructively critiquing chapters in Karen Trollope Kumar's memoirs. So far she has sent me 13 chapters of a projected 17 or thereabouts. She's maintaining a consistently high standard in my opinion, blending the story of her discovery of Indian life, culture, medical practice, with the story of her own family's development and growth. What's more, Karen has challenged me in several Skype conversations to get out my own memoirs, dust them off and get them into better and more readable shape than they are now. So I've begun to work again on my memoirs too. The fact that Wendy's life as well as my own, is woven into the fabric of my memoirs from 1955 onward is a powerful incentive: I can't restore her to life but I hope she will live through my memories of her. I mean to try really hard to achieve this!