One Swallow

It’s all excitement at the Museum today. The first swallow has arrived! Yes, on March 24th, here he is. Ann, the House Manager always records the first swallow in the Visitors’ Book. 24th March seems amazingly early, particularly given the winter we have had, but perhaps he knows something we don’t. Ann tells me that the male often arrives first to inspect the nest. The female should be here in a few days. We will all have our fingers crossed for her safe passage. The nest is in the little room (former barn, of course) next to the shop, and Ann has stuck fluorescent post-it notes across the glass door to guard against crashes. There is a sort of sail suspended horizontally from the ceiling in there to protect the visitors heads…
When I started here I thought that I would make sure that I stayed until the swallows returned. (There are a fixed number of days for the residency - I have had to be careful not to spend them too quickly.) I’m not done yet! I hope it won’t be like Mary Poppins and the wind changing.
Next exciting event of the day - the costumes from Emma have arrived! They’ll be on display next month.
Third exciting event of the day - the art students have been making their presentations on the work they’d like to exhibit. (See the other blog - the one that is more beautiful than mine.) We have been shown some really gorgeous and clever things - responses to the Museum and to Jane Austen and her work. Yet again I find myself wishing that I was a visual artist rather than a writer - more fun to experiment with paint, ceramics, metal and glass than with amplification and hyperbole. But what am I complaining about? I can go and sit in the garden with a notebook and pretend to be writing whilst I keep watch for Mrs. Swallow.

Coming Back To Life

Well spring has sprung. The garden is really coming back to life. Each time that I come - even if just a couple of days have elapsed - there is something new out. The first snowdrops are almost finished and crocuses are still here with the cyclamen and the grape hyacinths, and the daffodils are on the march. Soon the outside wall will be under siege.
I’m quite pleased that spring is a bit later this year. Although there were still reports of primroses in autumn, I’m pleased that the natural order has, to some extent, been restored, although I read an article this weekend that said that the hard winter had been bad news for kingfishers...
I ran a workshop here on Saturday - Families In Fiction - which is just about my favourite subject. My starting point was Jane’s advice to her niece Anna:
“You are now collecting your people delightfully, getting them into exactly such a spot as is the delight of my life. Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on…”
So many novels that I really love are about families - or maybe all novels are about families or the lack of them. Discuss.
The next book for the Museum Reading Group is Mary Stanley’s The Umbrella Tree. So far so good. And the Writing Group is meeting this week on Wednesday. The optional homework theme is The One That Got Away. I had been planning on writing a short story for that, but so far it has eluded me...
My youngest son, Eddie told me that I hadn’t written my blog for four weeks - four weeks! I had thought it was only one! Meanwhile I have been visiting schools for our young writers’ competition. I’ve been to Treloars School in Alton twice now and have been so impressed by the students and their writing.
Back at the Museum we are faced with the horrible task of drawing up the competition shortlist. Horrible, because there are so many really good entries and because so many of them seem to have arrived stamped with hope and dreams. We’ll be publishing the winning entries on the website and announcing the winners in May. Watch this space.