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THE LENGTHENING days raise my spirits. I can put up with the dreich mornings knowing that spring is just biding her time to make an entrance. The snowdrops in the woods are in full bloom and the pencil heads of daffodils are showing above ground and will add new colour when the snowdrops die away.

ON MONDAY I did something I had been meaning to do, not quite for as long as I can remember, but for a long time. I drove to Stonehaven to walk to the memorial to the dead of World Wars I and II which stands atop the Black Hill overlooking the town.

ESCAPING FROM the winter weather I took Inka for a walk in the shelter of the woods beside Capo Quarry lying just off the Lang Stracht, the long, straight road running from the Upper Northwaterbridge to the foot of the Glenesk road. The woods are criss-crossed with roe deer tracks and there’s plenty of interest for dogs.

THE CALENDAR says it is winter, but spring doesn’t have a calendar and even if she did – and spring is a she, poet Hilaire Belloc writes of “our Sister the Spring” – she couldn’t read it. Anyhow, she doesn’t trouble herself with such man-contrived constraints.