Entropy. Doesn't it just grind you down?

Spring is traditionally about birth and renewal. Nature gets that right, but the rest of us are upended in the darkest recesses of our garages, fishing out cobwebbed parasols and rusting barbecues which we seemed to have put away only the day before yesterday. As, back aching, I scrape off the furred remnants of what might have been a kebab, slap paint over the rust patches on the Overton table, and rub raw linseed into desiccated benches, my mind dwells on the relentlessness of entropy.

Last week we drove through Glen Orchy in Argyll. It was years since I had last been there, and I had forgotten how stunningly beautiful it is, even though the water was low and the trees not yet in leaf. But there were cars and tents and camper vans round every corner. Most seemed to be young men, perhaps fishermen or climbers, but there was one group clustered round a camp fire playing guitars. Perhaps Paulo Nutini's mention of Orchy in 'These Streets' has attracted disciples although, for all we know, he may have been talking about the crescent in Paisley. If the glen is this crowded in April, August must be indescribable, those lovely banks one long, littered car park and human lavatory.

Mankind must be the finest agent entropy has ever possessed, barring possibly burnt kebab.