spring!

In an unbelievably unfair (given the current Red Alert status on the stuff-I-have-to-do meter) move on the part of Oxford, the weather has been gorgeous lately: sunny, blue-skied, relatively warm. So warm, in fact, that sitting in the park at Wellington Square (a park that has been featured on this blog before, as here and here) making a flower-chain crown for my hair and laying in the grass is quite a feasible alternative to, say, doing all of the paper writing and editing I have to do.

Actually, spring in Oxford came to me quite suddenly. In the midst of long library days, it's easy to ignore the ten minutes to and from the Bodleian that I usually spend head down, earphones in, powering through the usual wind and cold. All of a sudden, I turn a corner in a passage that I walk every day--and I almost run into a gigantic white cherry-blossom tree. It is cloud-like, voluminous--and has blossomed, apparently, overnight.

And that's when warmth and sunlight occurred to me, too. Either the elements conspired to become spring all at the same moment (possibly with the sole purpose of confusing me), or I've been walking around for two weeks unaware of my surroundings.

At any rate, it's brilliant. Come Thursday, I'll be free, for a little while anyway, and that freedom may well take the form of laying in the grass.