sunshine

The sun is back, hooray. We have a pond the size of a saucepan filled by two frogs and their spawn, which overnight has translated itself into tadpoles. The trouble with being a writer is that one is knocked about by the weather because it's often all that happens in a day. The sky is blue or grey or both and that alters everything, the light in the room, the quality of air on the skin, the comfort of sitting at a desk. But then, having written that, I know that weather happens to everyone. My characters in Paris are currently crushed by heat. History is full of weather. When I wrote about the Crimea and then the First World War I became obsessed by cold and wind and mud and how joyful the soldiers must have felt (there are very touching letters and drawing about it from the Crimea) when the first wild flower appeared in spring, the first touch of sunshine. A revolution fought in the freezing cold is quite different to one conducted in blazing sunshine. There's a book there, for someone. Weather and mankind. What would have happened if...