Sometimes I think I am reading far too much and all over the place. Newspapers, opinion pieces, social media commentary, all the blogs and that substack algorithm that comes up with another three tantalising suggestions every damn time I finish reading one post. Then, there's books, of course, real books and the notices from the library when a book I have reserved weeks ago is ready for pick up. But also, e-books and good grief, here we go: audio books and podcasts. At the end of the day, I struggle remember what it was I just read or listened to all day. It's all so brilliant and disgusting and enlightening and confusing and then again, trivial and just someone's string of consciousness.

I sit in the sun on the first warm spring day, I close my eyes and listen to birdsong, to the twin girls from across the gardens playing the lava game, to R hacking away with a machete deep in the overgrown corner at the bottom of the garden. The usual Sunday afternoon noise from a light airplane above, someone living their expensive dream.  Hey honey, I am off for a spin with the plane, or something like that. I had an uncle, a successful dentist in one of the better off cities on the river, who had suffered greatly during WWII and once told me that he promised himself a private little airplane should he survive. He did and got the plane and one day, maybe 25 years ago, I was in the kitchen mixing salad, listening to the news on the radio about a small airplane that had crashed, the single occupant dead and I knew immediately that it was him. I called my sister and told her and when she asked, what makes you think it's him, I said, it makes sense. And it was him.

On Tuesday, I am starting the next medical marathon, finally meeting one expert/week for three weeks to come and, as R tells me, then we should have a plan. He is fed up with cooking and eating alone.

My brother's last day at work was on Friday. Now all three of us are retired. It feels like we are standing in a small clearing in the forest of our childhood, Franconian pines on sandy soil, rows and rows of plantations from the 17th century, and we are looking around us, lost. Was that it? What happened?

Today, we cycled for a couple of hours along the river and back, crossing it twice. It was bedlam, tons of people, everybody got the message. Spring. Now. 

Note these spindly things. a yellow and a red peach tree and one apricot tree as proof.