It's that depressing time of year when the weather seems to have reverted to winter. After the first promises of spring in Fife (snowdrops, a sunny day sitting outside, taking one's jacket off for the first time) this cold and grey seems worse than ever.

Chris has left and I am lonely. The tasks that were fun and a novelty, which we chatted over and which stimulated discussion, are now monotonous and boring, smelly and cold.

Yesterday, to animate myself, I offered to do a really disgusting job: de-miting the hen house. I had to go in there, amongst all the birds, running the stinking stuff along a ridge. I hate going inside, I hate the chickens. But I felt a little better, having done it.

I wonder whether there is no such thing as spring; that spring never actually arrives but is only ever the promise of itself. Spring is most spring in a moment in which it is possible to remember what summer feels like.

Narnia (Father Christmas and the melting of the snow)

You do not know what to do with yourself when it's neither winter nor summer. You do not want to do anything. You eat a lot of food and then feel full and bored. I remember a year ago, in the Easter holiday of my final year at Oxford, lying in bed in the middle of the day, watching the trees move outside, wishing that spring would arrive. That it would be summer (art school finished, graduation, parties).

Now, there is nothing to do. Except deal with it: get up, go outside, face it: the cold and grey. Go for a walk. Dig. Work. And so the winter passes and you realise that spring has arrived after all.