A spring 'greycation' enlivened by Iris Murdoch’s The Unofficial Rose – Laura Waddell

With a forecast of one bright day amidst the boring greys, a prickle of a sore throat on the horizon, and nothing but moths, buttons, and figurative metaphors flying out of my purse, the long weekend I've just taken off was more of a greycation than anything else – a staycation without the sunshine, but for a few blessedly pale golden hours here and there.

What to do on a break with no budget – and still recovering from the ides of March, which were, this year, considerable – but read, take short walks, play games and eat soup, and beyond that, gaze out of the window? Those green buds of spring I was squinting to see on the trees – a question answered ‘not yet’ a couple of weeks ago by snowfall obscuring the view – have now truly started to appear.

There is a new magpie nest outside my window to look at for signs of change. Since it appeared – stark twigs at the top of the tree suddenly bustling with flap of wing and activity – it formed quickly into a shaggy bowl, thick enough to conceal the bird within, which I see now when it takes to standing watch from a next-door branch.

I bunkered down with Iris Murdoch’s lesser celebrated novel The Unofficial Rose, bought from last month’s International Women’s Day display at Oxfam Books Byres Road with vague intentions of one day getting around to it. And as it happens, that’s ideal holiday reading; a book somewhat out of kilter with the here and now, this one first published in 1962. With the kind of interwoven family plot that benefits from a hastily hand-drawn family tree on the inside cover, it’s a pastoral saga of intergenerational lost loves, long-burning crushes and regrets undone.

From within English country houses and smart London flats operate rival patriarchs Hugh and Humphrey, plain homemaker Ann, eccentric old Emma, tempestuous rose-cultivator Randall, visiting Australian cousin Penn and, my favourite of all, mischievous, mysterious Matilda – a young girl no one, neither adults nor children alike, can quite get a handle on – all propelled by longing, confused signals, and interior dilemmas.