The Promise of Spring
I write this under grey skies, the sun having retreated behind the clouds after teasing us these past few days with a glimpse of the promised spring.
There are so many signs of the start of spring. Flowers blooming, warmer weather, longer, lighter days, the clocks goingforward. There’s something special about the first signs of spring each year – the sun comes out and immediately we’re wrapped up in coats and scarves, smiling and laughing through the pain of half-frozen fingers as we sip a pint in a pubgarden, while the thermometer suggests we might derive more enjoyment from a hot chocolate by a warm fire.
And yet, each year, we are the same. Every year we experience afresh that joy and excitement when we open the curtainsone morning to see the sun shining in a cloudless blue sky and, not knowing whether it will last for five minutes or fivedays, we feel that urge to drop everything, to run outside, to soak up the first rays of sunlight.
And now we’re in that frustrating time, yo-yoing between the winter and the spring. Caught between two seasons and allthat they bring with them. A late Easter this year seems to extend this season still further, and yet the light is within ourgrasp. With every day that passes we journey further through Lent, through the darkness, to the promised Spring. Wemove towards the time when it will still be light as we travel home from a practice night, when the post-practice-pint canbe enjoyed outside in the beer garden. The sun taunts us, emerging from behind a cloud for a minute, for an hour, for aday, and we are drawn to it like moths, attracted by the light, by the warmth, by the longer days it promises, shiningbrighter day by day, until suddenly we find ourselves in the blazing heat of summer, wishing for some shade!
Josie Godfrey