There is a particular queasy disquiet that comes from looking at blossom in January. Or daffodils just weeks after Christmas. At seeing catkins dangling from trees that are still bathed in dark from about 4.30pm. It is an uncanny sense that something here isn’t right. I get it, too, in August, when the blackberries have already ripened into dust, before the new school term starts. Or when I hear birdsong under a yellow streetlamp.
Perhaps this is just the outdoors equivalent of moaning about Easter eggs being in the shops in January. As in, it happens every year but we are somehow shocked anew each time. Maybe daffodils have always pushed up their spears as students fill in their Ucas applications. Maybe there have always been blackberries in July. Maybe it’s just my memory playing tricks on me.
