Daffodils

DAFFODILS ! 

     My favourite flowers - I have a painting of “dafs” done by your mum, hanging in our sitting room. 

    They are one of the few things that I really miss: the view of those splashes of primitive yellow, thrown hither and thither by the tear-cold wind of springtime, under the tall, steel-grey, still leafless, copper beeches, standing motionless and without emotions, in the front garden at Down House. 

    Many years ago I wrote: 

     It must be all of forty years since last I saw wild daffodils. They used to be clumped around the silver-grey base of tall, still-naked beeches, bending from the high, hard, cutting-edge crispness of early spring, and gleaming with that impossibly-brilliant, metallic yellow. Then the smell. What a curious smell! Sultry and heavy like a sultan’s harem at midnight. Such a contrast with the puritanically harsh daylight. Such a clash with the few remaining, pristine-white crocuses. 

    Daffodils! The memory wakes others. Memories of the pain of ice-cold ears, and frozen tears forced from the eyes. Memories of a merciless wind penetrating the thickest clothing, and the inevitable agony from warming up freezing feet and soaking fingertips. 

    There were different types of daffodils: the simple big ones, with the same number of petals in the inner cup and the outer skirt. Then there were the more sophisticated ones, with white petals on the outside, and yellow ones within, or was it yellow ones on the outside and … ? 

    Well it doesn't really matter now, so far away, and so long ago...

(A letter to my nieces)