Pink magnolia branch across the back

The magnolia on the lot finally opened this morning, three weeks late and the colour of the inside of a shell. Mr Vane says it means the season will turn, but he said the same about the elephant's feet in October. I've been sweeping the pink petals off the ring floor before the matinee, which is absurd, since nobody comes to matinees now except the vicar's boys and a spaniel.

The tree was Hetty's idea. She bought the sapling from a nursery near Lewes the summer the big top still had its red canvas, and carried it on the train in a bucket because she said a circus ought to have something that didn't need feeding. Its branch has grown lopsided, reaching over the caravan steps. Yesterday I found a bud the size of a thimble wedged in the cracked hoop of the lion cage, which is the only place on the lot nobody has tried to mend.

The man from the council came on Thursday with his clipboard and looked at the tree longer than he looked at the wagons. He asked whether magnolias were native. I said no, nothing here is native, that's rather the point of us. He wrote something down anyway.

I'm keeping a cutting in a jam jar on the windowsill of the van, wrapped in wet newspaper. If they bulldoze the field in spring, at least one branch will have made it somewhere new. Come and see it when you're back in April. Bring your good boots, and don't let the petals fool you into thinking it's warm.

Yours, Noor