The lst of March: Spring is (fingers crossed) just around the corner, I no longer wake up in the pitch dark and, as the day progresses, peer into the gloomy murk which is the North of England in Winter.
It’s amazing what a bit more daylight can do. If I was an ancient Druid or something, I think I’d be moved to nip down to Stonehenge and start chanting at the sun or sacrifice something. It probably wouldn’t cause too much comment in Wiltshire but I’d be looked on as distinctly odd if I started erecting stone tables, wearing long white robes and greeting the dawn with public prayer in Greater Manchester. (I mean, people would look; and comment. And we call ourselves liberated. Huh!)
But, in this censorious age, I have to fall back on the more industrial and domestic Signs of Spring.
I’ve been told at least three times by people who come under the category of I-know-them-to speak-to-but-I-don’t-know-their-name-if-you-know-what-I-mean (in the bank, by the bloke behind the ticket desk in the railway station and the pet-shop owner) that it’s getting lighter in the evenings. It is, we tell each other in awe-struck tones, still daylight at five o’clock. I’m thinking about painting the fence. I’m told to Chill and Stop Stressing when I adjure the offspring in a voice of motherly concern to Wrap Up, It’s Bit Parky Outside. (Mind you, I did think it was a bit early for shorts, even when teamed with the tights and the Ugg boots thought suitable for college wear) and, in the more traditional signs of Spring, the birds in the garden are kicking up a dickens of a fuss about random bits of twigs and the snowdrops are venturing forth.
Do you know that terrific medieval song, Summer is y-comen in? Although it says Summer, the songster is obviously talking about Spring. It obviously is a song and not a poem and I can imagine it being bellowed out cheerfully by peasants and Aged Crones in Ye Olde Pubbe, the Saracen’s Eyeball, or DunCrusadin, quaffing ale or mead or whatever the equivalent of half of Carlsberg or a gin and tonic with ice and lemon and a little umbrella was. (Quaffing, as I’ve heard it said, is like drinking, only you spill more.) There aren’t many songs about flatulence, not that are printed in anthologies of poetry, anyway, so it’s worth noting for that alone.
Excuse the medieval accent: Summer is y-comen in, Loude sing, cuckoo! Bullock starteth, bucke fartheth, Merry sing, cuckoo!
Anyway, the 1st of March. I hope everyone dined exclusively on leeks to celebrate St David, the patron saint of Wales, and his Day. Despite beating us at Rugby (which caused some major distress and heart-searchings in the Gordon-Smith household) the Welsh are OK.
An Irish friend of mine refers to the Welsh as The Irish Who Can’t Swim but there are some pretty good reasons for staying in Wales, such as mouth-watering scenery and some of the daftest road-signs in Britain, which adds humour to your journey. St Davids itself, the smallest city in the UK (a city needn’t be glittering sky-scrapers or urban deprivation but merely a town with a cathedral) is a lovely place and Pembrokeshire idyllic. So, altogether now; plunge deep within to find your Inner Welshman and let’s let rip with a rousing chorus of Cwm Rhondda.
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