soft-hearted

Every spring, I go and lie amongst those bluebells. To remind me of another place, another time, when I was another person. During the war, when I was all gingham frocks and white teeth, skippity-hop and fahl-de-rahl. I even had a smile. I was going out with a young flier. I used to meet him off his base in Norfolk and we'd get into his old banger and drive off into the countryside and make love like rabbits, amongst the golden corn or the bluebells. Oh, god, it was wonderful to be alive then--the sheer energy of youth, so wasted on the young. Yes, there's still a romantic vein that runs through the granite hillside of my soul, and I dig into it once a year by going and laying silently amid the bluebells.