Oranges and daffodils

How is it that something can seem so uninteresting one year and strangely be grabbing my full attention the next?
I think it can definitely be circumstance-related but also my mind's own form of crop rotation.
Just leave something fallow for a while to regenerate and re-energise when its been slightly overplanted and look to ploughing up something else that's emerging from its resting time and pick it up and let those fresh seeds take root again...there I think Lucy H Yates The Country Housewife would be in admiration of that rural analogy or perhaps she'd take a scythe to it and tell me to pull myself together and get out and make some Mangel-Wurzel wine?
Take the Literary Festival.
I was listening to an excellent feature on Friday's You & Yours on Radio 4 about a LitFest in King's Sutton in Northamptonshire, tiny little local litfest that attracts the big names (P.D.James) and the visitors but remains altruistic about motive and strives to be all-inclusive within a small village that embraces both private housing and a council estate. By involving the primary school and drawing the children in to feature at the LitFest the organisers bring in the parents, no one need feel excluded on the grounds of exclusivity and litlovey cosiness. Even better the proceeds go to the local Church which is the centre of the community.
I did the main LitFests to distraction last year and I had a great time, this year I'm thinking that, apart from a few events I don't want to miss at one or two nearby, I will probably sidestep them, apart from Port Eliot that is which I'm very excited about because it is so different. Last year wild horses woudn't have kept me away from any of them, this year time to let them lie fallow and regenerate in my mind.
Then there are the literary prize lists.
I'll always drag myself through the Booker, that habit's too well-entrenched to change and I love it really I do, but I have a tough job keeping up with the Costas and last year I was well off the Orange Prize so I largely ignored it. I think I went into a ridiculous sulk and cut off my nose to spite my face over the judging debacle which all felt like a publicity stunt too far.This year they've been sensible and the focus is rightly on the books and I'm loving it. There have been some horror stories permeating the ether-waves about bookshops not stocking books by women writers because there aren't any good ones, which we can just ignore as piffle because most of this year's longlist is proving to be a truly uplifting reading endeavour and on this basis any shortlist that emerges will I feel sure be exemplary.
I've gathered in over two thirds plus a few more have arrived since this picture and I'm about halfway through those but savouring rather than rushing, and of course fitting in a medium-sized Bronte fix in-between takes time. Little chance of reading the lot by shortlist day but so far so excellent, and by the way those are real Tamar Valley daffodils with their lovely long stems alongside.
In fact I love them so much here they are again on my treasure of a book table and you'll see I have my next Jude Morgan lined up there too.
The scent is something else so now I've bought armfuls because at the moment they are just £2 for six bunches and they look so good in quantity and a state of plonked-in disarray (which is my own unique approach to flower arranging)
Inner Child Weekend coming up, I've chosen, have you?