It's Maytime and the weather is now fine – glorious full sun days that ought to be spent with pleasant company in the park, by the river, at the lido. Of course, most of the poor souls not in further education or enjoying self-employment cannot afford to drop the reins just to enjoy a spot of loitering in public places (unless they throw a 'sicky'). But for the lucky free ones, these days are so good that they really must be enjoyed to the full. Within the parks clusters of merry students have sprung up, each gathered around a guitarist, or some other attractor, a bottle or two of best Moravian red at their disposal. These will be the best days of their life, and should not be begrudged.
Elsewhere in the sun-baked fields and beside the muddy rivers grow the poplars and willows, the hallmarks of the European countryside. Their wispy seeds are taken by the wind and cast in sleety clouds across the landscape, lying like summer snow upon the grass, collecting in vast clumps as drifts. These soft forms – so light – take fairy flight, but find their wafted ways to clothes, hair and nose.
May snow, so far from season, falls like the broken heart, blown left and right by winds beyond its power. Filling the lows of the landscape, it clogs the simpering pathways for a time, but, who knows, perhaps after the deluge it will be gone.
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