Winter rain doesn’t fall here in Norfolk. Most of it just travels past, though a fair amount of it hits things like windows and faces. It’s a wonder any of it reaches the ground. Horizontal rain is an aspect of landscape: we don’t have anything to stop it except sky. And we have sky the way most places have buildings.
But I was trying to write about spring. You can find hints and promises of spring as early as the December solstice: an over-eager snowdrop, a tiny group of optimistic gnats, a chinking chorus at dusk from blackbirds. But today there was nothing. Only the rain hurrying by.
The world was holding on, gritting its teeth, trying to get through the day rather than anticipating glories to come. The marsh I can see from my desk was all browns and blacks, dancing willows waving their arms like hippies at Woodstock. Nothing in the world was thinking about new life: the glorious possibility of Not Dying was all-consuming.
Spring enthrals me above all other seasons: just as it enthrals us all. The annual transition from survival to glory is the world’s greatest drama and it always starts good and early. It’s just that today I could find no trace of it.
I walked across the garden, a little grumpy. Rotten old universe. Can’t you even manage a hint of good cheer? A homeopathic dose of hope? And so it came: teacher-teacher-teacher! This is the spring song of great tit. Not a great tune, but he’s doing his strident best and it’s a sure promise that better times will follow.
It’s happening. It’s all happening even if a lot of it is still out of sight and hearing. I walked back to the hut where I work, through rain that hurts and does so on purpose. Bloody hell – did you know there are catkins on the hazel.
First snowdrop was out on New Year’s Day at Burton Bradstock (Dorset). Is that a record, I wonder?
Cheer up Simon, spring is just around the corner, just been out in the garden to look at the Snowdrops and they have been pushed up out of the ground by an army of Moles. No worries, I quite like Moles, native wildlife have as much right to be here as us, if not more.
You just cheered me up. I Love your metaphors. “dancing willows waving their arms like hippies at Woodstock”.
Reading this cheered me up. Thank you !