On Saturday night

On Saturday night we took part in Earth Hour, WWF’s turn-your-lights-off-for-the-planet worldwide symbolic gesture, at 8.30, eating supper by candle-light and playing Scrabble in the dark (candle-light is dark!). Watching Alessio light the tealights was terrifying. Who’d have thought it could be so hard to get the hang of matches?

That was also the night the clocks changed, and the evenings are now light till about 7.30, which is great. (The adverse effect of course is that it’s now back to being almost dark when we get up at 6.30a.m., which is not so nice.) With all the blossom and the wildflowers there’s a proper sense of spring now – or there was till a couple of days ago, when a cold depression blew in, and a cloud has been sitting on top of us ever since, and we're back to mist, rain and mud. We’ve turned most of the radiators off but I’m still wearing two pairs of socks.

Not so many cuckoos here, but we’ve spotted the First Hoopoe of Spring. Hoopoes migrate here for the summer and are stunning pink birds with black-and-white striped wings and a crest. They tend to return each year to nest in the same place, like swallows; no sign of them yet, but our resident pigeons are nesting in their holes in the outside walls of the house, and there's a great deal of small-bird activity, blue tits and finches flying about with twigs and moss in their beaks. The sun has to come out soon. . .