The mystery bulb has revealed itself to be a tulip, and a rather pretty one at that. I had found a bulb abandoned on a wall. Nobody was around and there was no sign of any gardening activity, such as spades or trowels on the adjacent lawn. When I passed a second time, later that same day, the bulb was still there. So rather than have squirrels devour it, or let some oik fling it under a car's wheels just to watch it squash, I brought the bulb home and planted it. It was fun, actually, to watch it grow and wonder exactly what it might turn out to be. Obviously too big a bulb for snowdrops or crocus, my first guess was daffodil. Wrong! The green shoot which grew was too sturdy for daffs. Okay, a tulip? Yes, as tulip-shaped leaves emerged from the strong shoot - but what colour? Tulips come in a multitude of colours and forms, some glossy, some with raged edges to their petals. It's been a game of wait and see. Anyway, here it is. Enjoy! Spring has sprung, and what a wet one it...

In February, I turned 60.  I can clearly recall feeling slightly depressed when I reached the milestone of 40. Once you're 40, you can't pretend to be anything other than middle-aged. It may well be only early middle-age but there it is, an inescapable finale to the remnants of youth. Or so I thought at the time. This turned out to be utter tosh, and the cliché which insists that you're as old as you feel is a cliché for a good reason: it's true. So, my 40th birthday was 20 years ago already. Yes, even my mathematical skills, as dire as they are, can manage that much "mental arithmetic" as it used to be called in school. School - now that was even longer ago... Can you credit that in the final year of junior school our teacher insisted that we, her pupils, all learn to write with a dip pen? No, not an ink pen fitted with ink cartridges; they were too modern for her tastes. Her choice of pen had a scratchy metal nib fixed to a stick, which had to be physicall...