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A few days ago I went from one end of the country to the other in 48 hours. A small journey, really - in that time you can be on the other side of the world - but it still felt a long way. England’s southeasterly corner on a Saturday morning; we stood by the shingle and looked across at Dover. Scotland’s most western jag - the most westerly point on the British mainland - by Monday lunchtime. The land peters out in sharps up there, dark, flat slate that glints in the rare sunshine.

The miles between the two (567 to be precise) were shrunk by the fact that daffodils were blooming in both. M and I spoke about it in the car, spoke about how seven years earlier when we were up in Orkney in mid-April, the daffs had seemed late (he’d lent me a book about the islands and I’d read it because we were new, and then booked a trip up there because I had to see them). But it’s warmer now, and so we clocked them with a kind of climate-anxious wonder, these bold, familiar harbingers of spring.

Another few days and back in London. The sense of lichen-dressed trees and peat in the water was unshakable even among small mountains of laundry and closed-in skies. I wake up and want to go to the flower market, so I strap the baby to me - still in his pyjamas - and off we go, while the skies are clear and the streets Saturday-morning sleepy. There’s a lot in there: tulips and trees, sticks of blossom and carnations in every colour. Icelandic poppies bursting from their packets and sweet peas, somehow, on long stems. I am here for narcissus...