Wyn Drabble: Springing back from a horrible experience

The flowering cherries are already blooming profusely, providing pastel pink umbrellas. Photo / NZME

OPINION

Last week I experienced one of the most trying hours of my life. Such a trying hour was it that it actually lasted three hours (though the after-effects could linger for years). I estimate that the experience measured at least eight on the Richter Scale.

I'm sorry but I am not willing to describe the experience in detail as that would make it all real again and I could begin to shudder, convulse and scream loudly, all of which make typing tricky. Also it might throw bad light on the many innocent, hard-working people who were, through no fault of their own, caught up in this drama.

Suffice to say that the hour(s) provided damning evidence that our health system is not broken. No, based on this experience it is totally wrecked, possibly beyond repair. And if, to date, you have lived by the tenet that good things come to those who wait, you might even want to reconsider that "truth".

Already I feel the need to take comfortable refuge in what I shall call a softer, more serene scenario so I would like now to take a few moments to talk about the delights of spring.

At our place, the flowering cherries are already blooming profusely, providing pastel pink umbrellas which delight with their splashes of colour and offer welcome shade when required. They also provide welcome relief from bureaucratic bungles, understaffing, under-resourcing and inefficiencies which beggar belief.

The lavender plants I cut back are also showing signs of their spring regeneration with tiny green tendrils beginning to probe their way to light and freedom.

Initially I had felt that I might have been too severe with my pruning but clearly I was not nearly as harsh as hospital cut-backs which in turn have led to interminable waiting lists, ongoing pain, inconvenience and the frustrating burden of waiting, waiting, waiting.

Some of the flower pots are on the verge of sending up their tall floral pillars: foxgloves, lupins, delphiniums and the like. Even the cornflowers appear taller than usual and are about to burst into a bonanza of blueness.

The roses have fragile little branches sprouting from their bare sticks after their winter pruning surgery which they received in a timely manner without having to endure time on a waiting list, without having to be examined and awarded an order-of-importance placing, without having to make repeated requests, without having to suffer.

And when the tallest floral stars have delivered their displays, the sunflower seeds are waiting to replace them. Planted directly from seed, they will grow taller each day and by the peak of summer they will mimic the celestial ball of fire from which they take their name. The sun will truly shine.

And, at the peak of summer, when everything is in full bloom, the garden will promote feelings of calm, inner peace and even joy. It will provide a place to relax and enjoy the sights and scents of nature. It will be a sort of botanical nirvana.

It will, most of all, provide welcome relief from disbelief, frustration, anguish, misery, suffering, torment, distress, hopelessness, torture, wretchedness and that horrible feeling you get when you are driving up a steep incline, the petrol gauge is on empty, there is a wasp loose in the car, you feel that you left the iron on at home and you are sure that the bank is coming to repossess everything you own because of a curse a wicked aunt put on you back when you told her that her new dress made her look big at the hips.

Yes, I rather like spring.