Tonight:
9°c
The sun is out and it's time to get outdoors and feed our jaded urban souls with the wonders of nature. But what is a Londoner to do?
There is an uncomfortable irony in stopping your car in the countryside and taking a deep breath of fresh air when we have choked the planet to get there. Credit crunch aside, we no longer have a climate which can support the carbon cost of mini-breaks in the Cotswolds or second homes all over southern England.
We must look around the city to find a corner where the natural world reigns. And although London is more famous for acres of glass and steel than grass and trees, there is still more rus in urbe than meets the eye.
Some of it is on an impressive scale, as I discovered this morning running in Hyde Park at the uncharacteristically perky hour of 7.15am. I was there for the cherry blossom; I came around the end of The Serpentine and tripped over a cavalcade of the Blues and Royals.
Fifty soldiers on huge horses were silently cantering through the early morning sunlight, spurs glinting, the plumes on their helmets fluttering like banners in the breeze.
A flight of geese hit the surface of the lake, and what with the thunder of hooves and the whoosh of wings on water, I felt that life really doesn't get much more natural than this. And it's on our doorstep every morning.
My running also takes me to the Grand Union Canal, in which I nearly fell earlier in the week as a brown hen popped out from under one of the narrowboats, followed by three fluffy chicks. Seeing a woman planting seedling carrots in a wooden box on the roof of The Lucy Ann, I felt as if I had stumbled into another world. The hen lives on this narrowboat in a small wicker house. She could just as easily live on my windowsill, acting as a screen for nasty insects and supplying me with eggs.
So I will be pacing the cavalry and tending the potential hen and will not have time to mourn the lack of mini-breaks in my life - and my carbon conscience will be clear at last. This weekend will start with some fresh asparagus from a friend's allotment - a country weekend in Bayswater.
Raffaella Barker's novel, Poppyland, is now out in paperback (Headline Review, £7.99).
