The things I miss the most catch me completely without warning. An incidental mention of daffodils in Regent’s Park can have me reeling with an acute pang of nostalgia. Suddenly I need a minute to just sit with it, because it is years of running through the beginning, peak and end of their yellow and white flowers. They were a constant in a swirling city of growing up and ultimately, moving out.
On a longer run, I’ll have also sought out the daffodils in Hyde Park. To get there, I’d weave through Marylebone, coursing down side streets whose particular architecture is particularly vibrant in that very particular spring light. It’s the white stone surrounded by warm red brick, smooth and matte against that blue sky. The sun is finally on a slightly higher axis so it hits the buildings like a desk lamp. By high summer, everything is drenched in a glorious glow but this, here, is bright and clean.
I’m thinking of one stretch in particular in Regent’s Park and other runners might know it: it’s between the end of The Broad Walk and the road up to the Inner Circle, just after the English gardens. I say other runners might know it because I am often - was often - navigating the narrow trail between the flowers while dodging a runner coming in the opposite direction. I like to think we laughed and delighted in it but I know that in reality, I grumbled at them for ruining a moment I loved and needed so very badly.
I moved out of London just after the daffodil season in 2023. I arrived in Wiltshire to wild garlic, cow parsley, lambs and nettles. I was overwhelmed and overawed by natural beauty. I breathed deeply, reaching forgotten corners of my lungs, sprinting and skipping through acres of what I had been craving for so long. Farewell harsh city, I don’t miss you at all, I thought as I swung over a stile.
But 13 years of going through the seasons in a place does things to a person. I always find winter hard - mentally, physically, immunologically - but spring in the city meant getting back into the Kenwood Ladies’ Pond on Hampstead Heath, lazy (if chilly) walks home from Parkrun with my friends, all of us in woolly hats but yes, sunglasses. It’s the first time in months that ankles and wrists have been exposed to the sun as you warm your hands on a takeaway coffee or stretch your legs out with a pint outside a pub.
By its very nature, a city is full of people and every year I loved seeing a multitude of shoulders soften and chins tilt upwards as soon as the clearer, warmer days arrived. That will happen in the countryside too and, my god, I’m going to witness first hand all of the incredible new growth, smells and sounds that come with spring. I can’t wait. The trails will dry up and the light I run through will grow more dappled until it reaches full coverage in summer.
But I won’t be part of the epic, mass sigh of relief like I was while living in a city that’s home to millions of people. I’ll see folk smiling on benches and closing their eyes beneath trees, of course. I’ll see their easy strides as they walk through the warmer days, a cautionary jacket tucked under one arm. I’ll see it all, but it won’t be with the same intensity. I won’t share that moment with literally hundreds of other people on the first real day of spring, the one when we wake up and collectively know we’ve turned a corner, we’ve made it out alive, we’ve lived to tell the tale.
This first day of spring is the one where I most recognise the herd instinct inside myself. Sure, it is two runners fighting over the best line through the daffodils, hungry and greedy for beauty and life, but at least we’re in it together.
My nearest city is Bath. It’s a pretty great city to have nearby, as it goes. I’ll go there for my lamplight sunlight against the buildings: Bath stone rather than London brick. I’ll get my fix of tourists and disgruntled locals. I’ll dither, weave, tilt my chin up in the breeze and yawn out those tired muscles at the back of my neck.
And I’ll wonder how London is doing. It will never be far from my mind while I build new seasonal memories here. Because both things can be true: I can yearn for a home while I make one here. And after all, isn’t that nostalgia, that melancholia, that delicious jouissance part of what spring is about? It’s a time to let go.
