I took the hammock out of hibernation and slung it in its accustomed place, one end attached to a low branch of the glorious ash and the other to a species of exotic conifer. I took my place with caution: it seemed a lifetime since I had last lain swinging between two trees. Then I took my feet from the ground and was free.

While I was writing my lockdown book The Year of Sitting Dangerously — in which I spent a year sitting for an extended period of every day in the same folding chair overlooking the same chunk of marsh – I had a foolish fancy. Why not do a book about a year as viewed from the hammock? The Hammock Diaries…

There are problems with this idea, the most serious being that I can’t see anything except a narrow patch of sky, and that disappears when the buds burst on the ash. The second is that my eyes tend to be closed anyway. But surely profound inspiration would spring from these enforced limitations.

A crow called: that triple caw, harsh and hoarse. When it stopped I was aware that there had been a gentle cawing going on all along: coming from the rookery 100 yards away. How best to describe the difference in these caws? My mind wasn’t exactly racing. I heard the deep buzz of a queen bumblebees going about her work. A flicker in one briefly opened eye might have been an orange-tip.

Reasonable. That’s what it is. A crow’s caw is angry, demanding, rather sweary: faaaaark! But a rook’s caw is calm and rational: can we discuss this please? I think you’re wrong, but I see your point. Well, yes – and no. Pleased with this realisation I heard another rook start a series of strange hiccupping calls. Time passed. The hammock swayed. Spring carried on arriving.

https://www.waterstones.com/book/spring-is-the-only-season/simon-barnes/9781526667359

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spring-Only-Season-Works-Matters/dp/1526667355