This is how Spring starts.

First, the rain stops. Abruptly, and without warning, you wake up one day in September to the feeling that you could survive the day without a jacket and a scarf. Always a feeling, though, never a certainty: Christchurch will always leave you guessing until about four minutes after you’ve definitely and irrevocably left the house.

And there are daffodils everywhere. They spring up overnight, in little rectangles along the banks of the Avon, golden and optimistic. There are other flowers, naturally, but the daffodils are like a snowflake, a red-brown maple leaf, or a little stylised sun: they are Spring.

Next, the dust. Also without warning, you find your car, your driveway, your outdoor furniture covered in a very fine, very pale green powder. This is Christchurch: the “Garden City” (even officially so, apart from a brief period a few years ago when the City Council went mad and changed the city’s motto to something ridiculous and forgettable). The trees, which have been holding their breath since March, finally let go a sigh of relief and shower the city in pollen. In Spring, at least, Christchurch can always bring a tear to your eye, even if that tear is the precursor of two months of itching and sneezing.

And then, once the mild weather and lengthening evenings have lulled you into a false sense of security, the rain starts again. And so, once again, you wake up, and Spring has changed the city. The rain has found the pollen, and the tiles and cracks in the footpaths are limned with a luminous green paste that eddies sluggishly in the gutters but refuses to wash away.

Spring is suddenly, obstinately, damply here.