It will be Spring soon ...

For no good reason other than that the sun is still visible in the later afternoon, rather than setting when we're still at this point on a walk and leaving us to walk back in increasing gloom and chill, the line above came into my head, along with thoughts of the poem it comes from, Philip Larkin's Coming.

On longer evenings,
Light, shrill and yellow,
Bathes the serene
Foreheads of houses.
A thrush sings,
Laurel-surrounded
In the deep bare garden,
Its fresh-peeled voice
Astonishing the brickwork.

It will be spring soon,
It will be spring soon -
And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a scene
Of adult reconciling,
And can understand nothing
But the unusual laughter,
And starts to be happy.

This photo is far from the England of Larkin's life and poetry - taken at the end of the Ardyne (again!) looking towards Bute and the distant, still snowy Arran hills.