Diary

Susan Hill

Wednesday, 22nd April 2009

Susan Hill opens her diary

Why did Eliot call April ‘the cruellest month’? Yes, we have lit a fire and it is dismally grey, but last week we basked in sunshine, and look around you — blossom everywhere — cherry, plum, blackthorn, late daffodils, early tulips, first bluebells. The wood is starry with anemones, the water meadow thick with the nodding heads of a thousand fritillaries. The first cuckoo has been heard and house martin sighted; today the first swallow returned to its usual place, Blondel on the telegraph wire. I celebrate April as the return to life. ‘Cruel’ I do not understand.

‘Self-esteem’ is a tiresome PC jargon word, generally preceded by ‘low’, but improving one’s view of self can be cheering, as I discovered when urged by some media therapist to give mine a boost by listing things I could do, and so focus on positives rather than on failings. I realise I can ride a bicycle, drive a car, wire a plug, fit a washer on a tap, type on a QWERTY keyboard without looking, upload digital photographs to a computer, read a meter, bath a baby, make an omelette, hoe a row of lettuces, prune a rose, remove smells from a refrigerator, take my own blood pressure and revive a dying puppy. I know tonic solfa and the notes on a piano, on which I can play four Christmas carols from memory. I can whistle, put a saddle and bridle on a horse, dial the emergency services blindfold, and ask for directions to my hotel in three foreign languages, recite at least six poems by heart and sing many more hymns than that all the way through without consulting the book. I can say my times tables and the alphabet backwards. I find I am rather accomplished and it has boosted my self-esteem no end.

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