BY THE time you read this we may all be putting up umbrellas or wearing fleeces again but at the moment the weather is just about as good as it gets.

Warm but not too hot - no horseflies about yet - and cool at night so that you can sleep with the window open just enough to hear the birds singing their hearts out as dawn gives way to daylight.

Even Malcolm doesn't get stressed if a door is left open (I keep telling him that when I perfect the art of getting to the other side of a door without opening it, I'll do just that but it hasn't happened yet) and he even agreed not to light a fire in the sitting room over Easter.

Easter. What fun that was.

Instead of running in with muddy boots and dripping waterproofs, we could stay in the same footwear without the risk of tramping mud all over the house and the cats didn't leave muddy pawmarks all over the kitchen.

We had our first cook-out of the year, down in Harcombe valley, and although we didn't eat until it was almost dusk, no one complained of being cold - not even Malcolm.

The wheeling buzzards overhead gave way to bats and hooting owls and we could no longer see the bluebells (at least a month early) and pale wood anemones growing in Harcombe wood, as the stars shone out from the purple sky.

It is scary, of course, because it's so unseasonal. I've never seen bluebells or cowslips before the trees are properly in leaf and although I know that one swallow doesn't make a summer, I'm almost sure I saw one flutter out of Charlie's stable a few days ago.

And there have been larks flying up from the meadows ever since the warm spell began.

Soon we'll be worrying again about water shortages and I'll be tearing my hair out because we haven't enough grass for the horses and will have to go on feeding them hay.

But at the moment it's so lovely, after all the rain and mud of the winter, just to enjoy these seemingly endless sunny days which bring such a marvellous feeling of well being.

An old cowman I once knew used to say that it was the warm weather which caused his stock to look and feel their best. "It's the sun on their backs. You can't beat it," he used to say. And it has just the same effect on human beings.