Spring Watch

Now that we can safely turn on the TV without being showered in tips on how to cook your turkey this year, or 101 ways to have a stress-free Christmas, delivered in a style that insists you become stressed. Now that the green bin is stuffed with the debris of pulled crackers which brought a split second of moderate amusement and Mariah Carey has finally put a sock in it, or please God, got it together with the object of her affection so that we might be spared next year.

Now that the whole pantomime of Christmas is over, the demands that we all eat the same foods, watch the same TV and perform the same rituals is over, we are finally allowed to breathe again and behave like individuals. I have heard tales of people writing their own Christmas rules and making plans in line with their own personal preferences and it gives me hope for the future. And speaking of hope, that is the feeling I always have at this time of year when we are about to open a new copy book with the words 2019 on the cover and not a word written inside it yet.

There is something about January that appeals to the puritan in me, the sparseness and clarity of it. Julia Donaldson’s children’s book A Squash and A Squeeze may, in fact, have been written about this time of year. When we fill our homes with a tree, an actual tree, and cover every surface with decorations and cards which by now are curling at the edges. I love the day when it all gets taken down and home return to an oasis of calm or at least a place where you can usually find things.

And whatever you might say against January, it is hard to top it for light. I once took a photo of a tree in our garden and I captured it each season from the same angle as it has four very distinct appearances. In spring it twinkles with white blossoms, in summer it is heavy with apricots, in autumn it is ablaze with golden leaves and in winter it is a stark silhouette of bare branches against a bright blue sky. Every time I look at the four images framed together, I am struck that it is the winter image with gives the bluest sky.

Everyone thinks January is the month where you have to mind yourself, when you can take a sudden dip in the mental health stakes, but personally I find it is a very welcome hush after all the noise of December. It is a lovely time to go for walks, I always find I have a pile of good books to read and the resolutions are still fresh enough to make me try to live in accordance with the kind of stuff I know I really want to do, if only I could summon the commitment.

It’s February and March that are the real joy-hoovers, they are, I imagine, like lying tinder profiles, masquerading as spring but in reality, laden with damp and full of promises they haven’t got the wherewithal to deliver. January is an honest Joe, it is upfront about its cold and dark side but like the beast in Beauty and the Beast, just needs more understanding to be fully appreciated for its sensitive side.

At this time of year, I always find myself humming that Bette Midler song, The Rose, ‘just remember in the winter, fall beneath the bitter snow, lies the seed that with the sun’s love, in the spring becomes the rose’. I am not prone to taking my inspiration from saccharine American ballads but you can’t deny there’s a certain truth in it.

January is like the Monday of the week. It is a day when nobody is looking to meet up, it is, in other words, a time you can get yourself together. In January you can actually hear yourself think, you can run your hand over the first page of that new copy book and decide what you would like to put in it. I believe there is an expression that summer bodies are made in winter. Every year, I delight in the idea, there is still time, a few changes and a far more svelte butterfly could emerge from the chrysalis this year.  And as soon as all the Quality Street and cheese is gone, I’m definitely going to look into it!

Mother nature really is far more awe inspiring than any north pole elves, the way she feverishly works away during these still months to push up an array of colourful plants to delight our senses. While we were busy munching on our Christmas dinner, she was birthing snowdrops in quiet corners. With bend heads they are the demurest of flowers, these lowly handmaids avert their gaze and so invite us to slow down and enjoy their beauty. As we scurry by in the dark, daffodils are inching their way through soil, branches are filling with buds, that just need to fatten up before they are ready to put on their show.

We are past mid-winter and each day delivers a tiny bit more daylight, I have taken to tracking it on my phone and even though it is in teeny increments, our solar powered beings are getting a longer battery change every day. Hang in, we’re over the worst of it, and watch out for signs of new life all around.

Oh and Mariah, all we want for next Christmas is that you and your royalties cheque take off somewhere and leave the rest of us in peace.