#algy

It was Sunday again, and Algy saw no reason to forgo his Sunday reading just because he had happened to find a baby dragon underneath a rhubarb leaf…

The funny wee creature had been following Algy around everywhere since St. George's Day, and like most young animals it was both playful and full of curiosity about everything. So when Algy settled down among the spring flowers to read to his diminuitive new friend, the tiny dragon kept jumping up and down on Algy's book of verse, and interrupting him, which made it a wee bit difficult to concentrate on the poetry.

It had been a most exciting week altogether – the first week of the real spring – and with plenty of sunshine in calm, warm weather (which had reached a dazzling high of 18 degrees celsius on one day), many summer visitors had arrived, including cuckoos, swallows and sand martins, and many other creatures, such as butterflies and bats, had been spotted for the first time this year.

So Algy turned the pages of his book of verse, as best he could with a baby dragon hopping up and down on them, until he found the poem that he wanted to read to the wee creature:

Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king, Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring, Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing: Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo! The palm and may make country houses gay, Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day, And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay: Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo! The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet, Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit, In every street these tunes our ears do greet: Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to witta-woo! Spring, the sweet spring!

On St. George's Day, as some of Algy's longstanding friends will know, Algy always keeps a lookout for dragons, in case he can assist them in any way on this most dangerous day of the year (for dragons)…

And – oddly enough – Algy does always seem to meet a dragon of some kind on this day… but perhaps it is only because he is paying special attention to looking for them…

Algy had planned to go out and about adventuring on this particular St. George's Day, and the day did dawn bright and sunny, but there was a surprisingly cold wind which whistled through his ear feathers in a rather painful way, chilling his enthusiasm considerably. And so, on reflection, Algy thought that maybe he would stay in the relative shelter of the garden after all, even though it reduced his chances of meeting a dragon.

Recalling that his good friend @zemagltd had told him that although he was very fond of rhubarb it was almost impossible to find it in Portugal, Algy fluttered down to the bottom of his assistants' kitchen garden to inspect the early rhubarb patch, in the hope of sending his friend some fine virtual rhubarb at least, although sadly he could not send the real thing…

But rhubarb was not all that Algy found at the bottom of the garden, for there, sheltering beneath the large umbrella leaves of the thriving plants, was a tiny baby dragon. Of course Algy should not have been surprised, given that it was St. George's Day, but on the one hand he had never met such a tiny dragon before, and on the other hand he hardly expected to find one among the rhubarb!

Perching gently on a leaf beside the tiny creature, Algy asked it what it was doing there.

As was so often the case, the weather birds' predictions were not entirely accurate, for on Sunday morning Algy woke up to heavy showers and thick, wet, totally grey mist, which lasted right up until the middle of the day, instead of the fine, sunny weather which had been forecast.

But in the early afternoon the sky did begin to clear quite rapidly, the sun came out, and the world was suddenly bathed in light. Algy hurried out into the sunshine, then flew over to the wee pond, where he was thrilled to see that everything was looking remarkably lush and green after the rain – in fact so much so that he could barely see the water for the profusion of enthusiastic pond plants that not only covered the surface but in some cases were attempting to climb out of the sides.

Reflecting that things quickly started to get quite chaotic in Nature once spring really got under way, Algy collected a book of verse for some quiet Sunday relaxation, then hopped over to perch beside his friend the old garden Buddha, with the intention of reading to him for a wee while.

Algy had chosen a volume of verse called "The Four Seasons" in the hope of finding a particular poem he had once read, which he felt was especially apposite, but although he searched every page in the section of poems devoted to the spring, the poem he sought was not there.

Slightly disgruntled, Algy wondered whether he could recall the poem sufficiently well to recite it from memory. For a while he pondered, staring at the pond, where he was thrilled to see a distinctive movement among the pond plants on the opposite side which indicated that one of his amphibian friends had returned. Encouraged by this happy observation, Algy then began to speak:

The leaves are fresh after the rain, The air is cool and clear, The sun is shining warm again, The sparrows hopping in the lane Are brisk and full of cheer. And that is why we dance and play, And that is why we sing, Calling out in voices gay, We will not go to school to-day Or learn anything: It is a happy thing, I say, To be alive on such a day.

In Algy's opinion, spring was not really spring without primroses. He couldn't be sure how folk in other countries might feel about it; indeed, Algy did not even know in which parts of the world wild primroses could be found. But to Algy primroses were the very essence of spring, and he was delighted that they grew wild in the local landscape of the wild west Highlands of Scotland, as well as in patches of his assistants' garden, where they had established themselves without being formally introduced, but were nevertheless most welcome.

To Algy's surprise, the weather pattern had started to change on Saturday morning, and the wind had begun to swing round towards the north, exactly as the weather birds had predicted. Of course Algy hadn't really believed them when they said that the weather would improve, because months of wind, rain, sleet and even snow, not to mention persistently too-low temperatures, tended to make a fluffy bird sceptical at the very least… But on Saturday it was beginning to look as though the forecast might possibly have been right, and a phase of better weather might perhaps be just around the corner…

So, with hope in his fluffy heart, Algy perched on a tiny bush beside a particularly luscious clump of primroses, lit up by a spring sun which was almost beginning to feel a wee bit warm, and relaxed there for a while, dreaming happily of more pleasant days to come…

The wind was roaring again. Not whispering, not murmuring, not whistling or rustling or whooshing, but positively roaring, and Algy could barely hear himself think. But when he did manage to think for a moment or two, he thought that it would really be rather nice if once in a while the wind could calm down a wee bit, and perhaps not rage absolutely all day every day…

However, the wind was evidently not persuaded of this idea on this particular morning, and it simply continued to roar – rain or shine… and sometimes it did rain, and sometimes, for a short while, the sun did shine, and yet still the wind roared on…

And so Algy sought one of the most sheltered spots he could find in his assistants' garden, where a young forsythia bush was hanging on to some late flowers despite the unfavourable conditions, for it grew in the lee of the big brash wall (or dead hedge), and was also sheltered by a strong clump of cypress bushes, where the wind was certainly still heard, but much less often seen…

Like a very famous bear whom Algy had long admired, sometimes Algy sat and thought, and sometimes he just sat… And in Algy's opinion there were few places better in which to just sit than among the blossoms of the great white cherry trees at flowering time, April weather notwithstanding…

And so Algy flew up to a higher spot in one of the trees and reclined on a branch in a fashion perhaps more accurately described as lying down than sitting… but in any case it was conducive to either thinking or not thinking, as the case might be, and on this occasion Algy opted for not thinking, for what was the point of thinking when one was surrounded by such a glorious sight?

Of course it was true that the weather was being decidedly bothersome again: the sky was totally grey, the strong wind kept blowing all Algy's feathers contrariwise, as well as into his eyes, and the frequent April showers had a tendency to dampen the process of not thinking in a rather insistent way.…