Easter Sunday. At 17:03, an excited tweet from the writer Horatio Clare, who lives somewhere down in the valley below. He has just spotted his first pair of swallows of the year.
I rush out into the garden, determined not to go back inside until I have also broken my duck. Ten minutes later, I am suitably rewarded: a lone bird flying low above the front field. It is gone before I can focus my camera, but definitely a swallow!
The swallows are back! All the way from South Africa! All is right with the world. Well, perhaps not all, but one very important thing at least.
