JOI DE VIVRE....

Today is the Ides of March. It may not have been Julius Ceasar`s best day but it is one of the best I`ve enjoyed for months on end. It seems that, finally, the cold, dark, drab days of winter may be behind us, for today is bright, sunny and pleasantly warm. The birds were singing and the local woodpecker was giving it bigtime in a nearby tree; the grass is growing again, buds are appearing and all in all it makes me feel so much more alive than I have done for some time.

So, there`s lots to do - gardening, car cleaning, fence painting (I`ve almost finished doing my fence in the style of Matisse) - but before all of that there was, this morning, the important matter of taking Barney out for a good walk. He`s 19 weeks old now and has begun to explore the world, so we put him in the car and took him up on the North Downs to a public woodland at Holly Hill - my picture shows Barney surveying the scene and taking in his new surroundings.

He was very taken with it - and so he should, for it`s a lovely area of quiet countryside. The local Council who look after it have placed a useful display at the top of the hill which points out some of the landmarks that can just about be seen in the far distance - The QE2 Bridge at Dartford, the skyline of Canary Wharf in London - all of 30 miles away. The area was given over for public use in 1943 by a gentleman named Mr. Cripps-Day and the council do their best with limited resources to keep the area attractive, safe and informative.

However, maybe the Council should visit it a bit more often, if for no other reason than to dispose of the various `items` left overnight by those whose priority seems to be anything other than admiring the view. There are, it seems, lots of ways to herald the arrival of Spring and to indulge in the joi de vivre which has been missing for so long.