Went the Day Well?

It's bloody spring again. March hares, daffodils and millions of madly infuriating people saying "It's turned out nice again."

There's now no excuse not to go down to the allotment. No excuse not to put on one's walking boots and walk the length of the South Downs reciting Stevie Smith or someone  equally uplifting. No excuse not to sign up for that over 60's Yoga class.

No chance of not discovering that the front room does look rather woe begone. In winter's sheltering gloom all those stored up little jobs stayed hidden. Now, as the perky sun puts on his hat and chirps away, all is revealed and the dreaded march to Homebase or B&Q threatens, along with a nice day out to visit Aunt Edith in backward Cambridgeshire. Pleasant thoughts that winter's chill winds may have finally carried her off are dashed as you hear her voice quavering down the land-line.

As Spring awakens, as the winter visiting geese head north to cooler climes and the sub Sahara migrating flocks head across the Atlas Mountains set fair for Dover's gleaming cliffs, so the bills cascade, through the letter box, in the in box and the mobile, like waters released from the icy chill of a northern winter. Council tax, road tax, car insurance, house and contents insurance, AA membership, they all clamour, pounding at your bank balance. The phone rings incessantly with companies offering you discounts on this insurance, holidays in the sun, on the seas, in a rest home.

The insanity that was Christmas seems now a golden age: the blissful chill of early dark nights a dream now rudely shattered by the flush of green, the slash of yellow and a mat-full of enticing holiday offers topped off with that "Spring time" Equity Release give away.

Even if you don't want to you feel compelled to do something. Smile, utter pleasantries to neighbours who have been landlocked for the past 3 months. Council officials are slowly warmed by the lengthening days and fitfully resume their duties, blissfully dormant during  winter's intake of breath. Registration, communication, non-discrimination: the flyers land like swarms of gnats. And, horrors of horrors, the Election literature can be glimpsed just over the hill, behind the hedge, in the thicket ready to invade what quietude remains with klaxons, whistles and nonsense rhymes.

It is all too much. And to cap it all. The big brown bear that was hibernating in the bowels of Portland Place has lashed out and a billion tweets, like the mumuration of the world's starlings, rise up to the heavens with one voice "Free Jeremy Clarkson".

I'm moving to Antartica.