A brisk walk around Battersea Park. Looking for signs of spring, and for the rhyme or reason that I’m still wedded to London. I need to gaze at water but The Thames is low, the tide right out. The brightest thing in the park is an out of place wattle tree, shaking its yellow blossoms against the grey-white sky. But yes, there are also magnolia trees putting forth their creamy flowers, clumps of daffodils, a few small patches of bluebells; skittish squirrels; dogs off the lead haring about. The pungent reek of manure. A couple of hellebore nod, poking up out of dark earth. I love these downcast flowers, which I knew as Christmas roses as a child. They grew in our garden in Melbourne in the antipodean winter, nowhere near Christmas.  A bit further on in my therapeutic walk, there’s a good spread of yellowish green euphorbia, which somehow lifts my spirit a notch. Next week, the clocks go forward. We’ll be on British Summer Time. Perhaps by then I’ll have re-acclimatised, once more feel able to call myself a Londoner.