Hyacinthoides non-scripta

An 8am 'phone call (on a bloody Sunday...) took me off to Hampstead and the Royal Free Hospital to visit an old friend of whom I am deeply fond.

The four years since we last met vanished in an instant and despite his being very poorly we were both much up cheered.

Me, by being useful - he'd not had a visitor wheel him out for a cigarette for a while and he, by being wheeled.

Afterwards, it being a sunny day I wandered the Heath. Only slightly disoriented by being there in daylight, I saw lots and lots of Hyacinthoides non-scripta in full bloom.

As I walked back to the station a text message arrived from a friend who escapes London at weekends to enjoy the Kent countryside.

"Still no bluebells" it said.

Ha! I thought.