Well no, I know it’s not spring really, we’re not even quite out of January yet. But after the bleak and freezing weather of the last couple of weeks there seems to be a little bit of softness in the air this morning, and so I’ve come up with my top ten reasons why I think spring must be on the way:

1) It’s typical springtime weather, bright, sunny and breezy. Well, maybe slightly more than breezy. But the near gale force winds whipping round the house will surely blow the cobwebs away.

2) When I went out for a walk I didn’t need my gloves  and hat on.

3) I turned the thermostat on the central heating down yesterday.

4) I’ve gone three days in a row without a hot chocolate. Oh alright then, 2.5 days. But who’s counting?

5) The pots in my garden have green shoots appearing. It won’t be long before I have beautiful spring flowers. Although the bulbs which didn’t provide a tasty winter snack for the resident squirrel population (numerous) will be a delicious treat for the snails as soon as they begin to bloom.

6) I’m actually thinking about my garden for the first time since I planted aforementioned bulbs in October. I’m no rival to Charlie Dimmock, so what I have been thinking is that I need to phone the local gardening firm and ask them to come in and do some pruning and tidying, but still. When they’ve done all the hard work I might plant some primroses.

7) When I went to Colombia Road Flower Market on Sunday it was full of the springtime flowers I love best – daffodils, hyacinths, tulips – and I bought some catkins to arrange in a vase. And we always had catkins on the Spring Table at primary school, ergo it must be spring.

8) It’s my birthday next week. Having a birthday in February is quite handy because I can revive all the New Year Resolutions which didn’t make it through January, and that gives me a sort of cleansing, spring like feeling. Oh dear, I seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel now. I should have stuck to a top seven reasons. But I’ll keep trying.

9) I’ve just made a list of little projects I want to do around the house. And I actually might do some of them myself, as opposed to phoning a man who can. I was a bit daunted at the thought of hemming a pair of curtains by hand, but have now decided that sellotape will be a perfectly acceptable substitute, so that’s ok. Painting the frame of an old mirror surely shouldn’t be beyond me. And all this is a displacement activity for cleaning the windows and hoovering under the beds, which is what my house really needs in the way of spring cleaning.

10) I’m really stuck now. Erm, how about, because the Easter eggs are already in the shops, and surely, surely, retailers wouldn’t indulge in cynical unseasonal product placement in an attempt to persuade us to buy things we don’t want or need, so it must be spring.

And having proved to my perfect satisfaction that spring is on the way I can now feel entirely justified in going out to buy my first creme egg of the year.