Jet Blue

A beautiful day, windy with bright sunshine. This Jet Provost flew over the house while MrQ and I were having a cup of tea outside the back door. It is operated by Swords Aviation at North Weald and is one of the lowest-houred in existence. It is finished in its original South Arabian Force colours. I've blipped it before but not against a cloudless blue sky. :)

Today's poem is from A Shropshire Lad II by AE Housman. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/44411

Housman's main interests were the variety of seasons and the weather, the dates at which the flowers came into bloom and his unrequited love for Moses Jackson. His verse was written with male adolescents in mind. For WH Auden and his generation “no other poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent.” George Orwell remembered at Eton “these were the poems which I and my contemporaries used to recite to ourselves, over and over, in a kind of ecstasy”.

I think the cherry blossom in the poem is that of the wild cherry, bird cherry or cherry plum. There is little time for a lad to live and enjoy the spring.