1. In the café where I've been waiting, a high-pitched mechanical sound has been bothering me sporadically. One of the three plasterers eating cooked breakfasts on the table behinds me grumbles, too. The sound is still annoying, but at least it's not just me.
2. The park lawns are broken and dead, but anyway snowdrop clumps -- ice white and blue-green -- stand up in the ruins with no sign of dismay.
3. And the crocuses, pale like mushrooms, fragile as ghosts, have arrived one by one, until the silent defiant crowd of them tells winter that this is unacceptable.
