Snow Fest

 

In the past, I’ve always valued a snow day – one where there has been a deep enough fall to stop traffic and close schools. 

It has meant a lie-in, and the complete slow-down of life. 

Everything we meant to do that day goes by the board.  Might as well take a long walk then bake some bread.

However, this year saw yet another complete inversion of the norms.

On Sunday in St Albans, we had a reasonable fall of snow.

Usually, most people wait until the flakes stop falling before they go out. 

But I thought there might be a lot of people on the paths if we delayed, making it hard to socially distance. 

‘We should go out now, while it’s still snowing!’

So Nigel and I set off to cross the local public playing field. 

It turned out nobody had waited for the snow stop.  There were scores of people and nearly as many snow-people.  Snow fights, snow angels and sledding were all happening.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen it so busy. 

Clearly, in the absence of anything else in the diary, a snow day was no longer a peaceful oasis in the hubbub of everyday life.  Instead, it was the very epitome of excitement.

And it was great to see the everyday outlines of our local neighbourhood transformed.  Due to Covid restrictions we can’t travel to see a different landscape at the moment.  However, it came to find us.

Blue Monday

The third Monday of January is traditionally known as ‘Blue Monday’ and is the most depressing day of the year.

Even without the help of a Pandemic

Overcast and a cold and a bit rainy, the weather was in on it.

My Latin pupils, glimmering pale green and glum in the Zoom-light lesson, were in on it.

As if to emphasise the fact we would be going nowhere, Nigel had made an appointment for the car to be MOTed.  He was in on it too.

Outside, the garden looked grey-brown and dead.

However, I channelled the overly-cheerful 1913 literary heroine, Pollyanna, and looked for some things to make me glad.

One was the flock of redwing, wintering here from Scandinavia. (They clearly don’t know there are visa issues since Brexit.)  They landed on the cotoneaster tree outside my window, much to the consternation of the local blackbird who shooed them off.  But as soon as he turned his back they returned, swallowing down the bright red berries whole – like you or me gulping down an entire tennis ball.

The other was ‘Running Family’.  We see them sometimes when we go for a walk.  Dad, Mum and two small boys.  They belt along the pavement with the Dad zig-zagging backwards and forwards encouraging the boys.  Dad probably thinks they are doing it for the sake of the boys.  But Mum probably suggested it so Dad would run off his surplus energy and settle down quietly when they got home.

There.  Done it. Got through Blue Monday.

 

Online funeral

Today I am watching little knots of black-clad figures walk past by window.  They are on their way to a funeral at the neighbouring church which I attend.  It is the funeral of my elderly friend, Dilys who was one of the grand old characters of our street and whose memories of WWII I recorded for our Sharing Stories project.  She died peacefully in her own bed in the house where she was raised, an ambition she had made clear in the past.

In any other year, I would be attending in person, but due to Covid precautions, I’m at home, participating online.

It is a way of discovering the aspects of a funeral that cannot be reproduced online.

Usually at the funeral of an elderly friend, one meets their children and grandchildren.  I could see some of them on video but didn’t get a chance to press a hand and say how much I had admired their matriarchal grandmother.

I also missed that communal experience of grief that finds you swallowing back tears along with everybody else, even though you know the departed had reached the end of a long life well-lived and has gone on finally to Heaven to meet their lifelong hero, Jesus.

On the other hand, I could hear loud and clear the eulogies, the outline of a full life, embellished with jewel-like anecdotes.

And when they placed the coffin with its vivid flowers in the hearse just outside our house, I stood at the window and saluted.

Farewell, Dilys.

How was your Christmas....?

This year, Christmas was different.  Pascoe had come early to avoid crowded trains so was with us before the new restrictions curbed our Christmas plans.  The twins, however, were still in their flat, so we drove to Bermondsey and delivered gifts, food and decorations on the doorstep, but didn’t scoop them up and take them home despite the huge temptation which our parental instincts urged on us.

What can I say?

We admired the twins’ splendid Christmas dinner on Zoom and were impressed that they had dressed for dinner. Turns out Christmas is much more photogenic without us oldies.

It was a privilege to have Pascoe home.  Our own Christmas centred on knee-depth mud as we rambled with him over the Hertfordshire countryside every day.

And on Christmas Day, we had a very special encounter.  The three of us had reached Nomansland Common as the sun sank.  At a time of year when not many birds sing, we could hear a virtuoso performance from a song thrush, reminding me of ‘The Darkling Thrush’, by Thomas Hardy (below).  But although we stared at the tree, the bird remained hidden.  Eventually, I got out my phone and played a recording of a song thrush.  Immediately, our invisible entertainer appeared and flew straight at us, only just stopping short of dive-bombing us.

We laughed with delight. 

It may not have been an ideal Christmas, but once we started to look, there was so much to appreciate.

 

For those of our friends, however, who have been ill over Christmas, there has not been much fun and our thoughts are with you for a speedy recovery.

The Darkling Thrush

by Thomas Hardy

 

I leant upon a coppice gate

      When Frost was spectre-grey,

And Winter's dregs made desolate

      The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

      Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

      Had sought their household fires.

 

The land's sharp features seemed to be

      The Century's corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

      The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

      Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

      Seemed fervourless as I.

 

At once a voice arose among

      The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

      Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

      In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

      Upon the growing gloom.

 

So little cause for carolings

      Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

      Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

      His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

      And I was unaware.