Blackthorn blossom decorated every lane this week. It was late March and the best time to spot the difference between hawthorn and blackthorn. Blackthorn trees blossom before their leaves appear, while hawthorn does it the other way round. We use many cues to connect what we see with the seasons (fairy lights at Christmas, for example), and making a conscious effort to be observant each week was building a richer natural calendar in my mind than I’d ever had before. I hope next year I will instinctively think, ‘Blossom season, and that hedgerow is blackthorn, not hawthorn. It must be late March.’

Now I heard the year’s first chiffchaff chirping away, a call like a tiny blacksmith hammering an anvil all day long, ‘chiff-chaff-chiff- chaff ’. It is easily confused with the great tit’s ‘teach-er teach-er’ chirp. Not many people get excited by a little brown bird with a monotonous song. But I enjoyed celebrating a feisty six-gram bird that had flown all

Houses

the way here from Africa. I was becoming aware of so many things that had passed me by in all my decades alive. The sense of amazement was boosted by small new abilities such as distinguishing a chiffchaff from a great tit by their songs.

I arrived in today’s grid square down a busy road, cars swooping back and forth, that demanded all my concentration. A workman bat- tered the pavement with a pneumatic drill, and I had to turn off the road onto a quiet street of new houses before I could quieten my mind and settle into the slow rhythm of exploring.

Just a stone’s thrown from the railway station, this cul-de-sac was prime real estate for wealthy people commuting into the city. The homes were huge, with oversized cars parked outside. But all this big- ness came at the expense of any outdoor space. They had squeezed ten identical buildings onto a plot of land that would have been the size of one garden for a home like this in earlier times. This tug between houses and space was to be a recurring theme on today’s ride.