Ah, I’ve just seen the first swallows of the season. Two flew over my head, making a little chirruping call, so optimistic sounding. The buzz of a miniature light aircraft (of sorts) passes by my ear at the same time: a large black and red bumble bee whose furry body looks too heavy for its wings. It hangs low in the air, legs dangling, reminding me of a microlight.
And it makes me think of this song:
And it makes me think of this song:
Squatting down on the path to pet the neighbour’s cat, who doesn’t seem to mind my somewhat absent-minded stroking, I'm distracted by tiny beasts busying themselves on the ground. I let my focus adjust incrementally like a camera lens, zooming in to the microworld at my feet. Ants, a cautious spider, a woodlouse. I wonder what their view of the universe is like. I attempt to envisage their surroundings from their perspective, like when you’re a kid and you lie on your back to look up at the ceiling, trying to imagine it’s actually the floor. (I loved my fantasy topsy-turvy room with its window just above ‘ground’ level and white stippled plaster instead of carpet, an upturned lampshade sprouting from it like a futuristic sculpture.) My mind idly follows this line of thought, just as my hand idly follows the curve of the cat's sun-warmed back. How might that stone, that leaf, my foot, look to an ant? And are we like mere ants in the vast garden of some other giant life-form?
Oh, stop!
Fortunately, the bee draws my attention away from this mind-boggling mental meander and instead to a dandelion, where it lands on the bright petals. I like the fact that the name comes quite poetically from the French for lion’s teeth, ‘dents-de-lion’ – I guess that refers to the jagged-edged leaves. The French themselves have a more blunt label for this plant: ‘pissenlit’ as in piss-the-bed, thanks to its diuretic qualities. A good herbal remedy, apparently. I've never tried it but my childhood pet tortoise, Twinkle, loved eating dandelion leaves. She frequently pissed on me too... Maybe this was just desserts for when I sometimes used to wrap little string harnesses around her shell so I could watch her carry an egg box behind her like a horse with a (very lightweight!) cart. Occasionally I'd set up small obstacle courses with objects to navigate around which, following that ant’s-eye-view-of-the-world line of thought, must’ve looked like some kind of Stonehenge equivalent to her. However, in spite of this humiliation, and the pissing, she and I got on well, and she would come running (ok, maybe not exactly running…) from the flower beds when I called her name. She was lovely.
And so my mind wanders on this sunny Spring Sunday: swallows, bees, dandelions... and a pissing tortoise.
I think I'd better get back to work tomorrow...
