In an unusual move for me and my body, I slept through last night with no interruptions, and consequently woke with a feeling of Warm positivity about the world. The sun added to it as I set off on my ride to work. Cherry blossom wafted across the cycle path, and all the trees on either side began to impinge on may consciousness. The limes, columns of freshness against the blue sky, their leaves still hanging with that slightly wet look they have just after bud-burst, looked like giant racks for drying out green hankies. The Norway maples flowered in green and purple, the only time of year they are at all noticeable as trees, stalwart urban dwellers though they are. The tents of the great horse chestnut leaves hung from candelabras in a park avenue, not yet aware of the leaf miner that would turn them brown and ugly by mid-summer. The blue of plane leaves signalled the return of their great canopies, and the poplars, speeding ahead, were already bedecked in summer garments. Even a row of ornamental apples, of which I am no fan, was utterly spectacular, mixed white, pink and magenta, boughs invisible beneath the garlands.

Strangely this promise of summer took me away from London altogether. I found myself remembering Thailand, a country in which I spent almost six months in my twenties. I remembered the heat, the dust, the blessed cool of the night, and for some reason the soi dogs, as we called them – feral dogs that haunted the streets and alleys of every city. It might seem strange that a warm spring morning trigger thoughts of elsewhere, but our senses are unpredictable, and on some days nature conveys so much information that its effect on us is the most unpredictable of all.

Now I’m in the office with a stack of boring paperwork. There’s a reason people rarely write diaries about doing paperwork.