Cherry blossom

In what I like to think of as The Spectator’s back garden — most people call it St James’s Park — the cherry trees are in blossom. There’s a group of six or seven of them, clouds of bright pink, in the corner nearest 22 Old Queen Street. They’re worth a look, even if you think blossom’s a bit of a girlie interest. There are more dotted around. A little grove of white cherries on the south side of the lake is ranked among the best in London, according to one website: ‘A simple point-and-shoot photo of these trees somehow transforms itself into an impressionist painting.’

But we shouldn’t rank blossom, or feel compelled to photograph it (the blossom hashtag on Instagram has five million posts), or think of it as girlie. Because all of that is beneath it. As the Japanese poet Otomo no Kuronushi wrote in the 9th century, ‘Every-one feels grief when cherry blossoms scatter.’