Welcome, Spring!

I am not an otter

In the same way that it's said Eskimos have 52 words for snow, the BBC online weather forecast seems to have about 500 different depictions of the sublte variations in the constant rain expected this week.



Summer is not here yet. Yesterday I wore my Barbour jacket (purchased in Chicago in winter to keep out the wind!) and a wool scarf. And I was still a bit chilly. Scott suggested we pretend it was October and then it would seen unseasonably warm.

I found a curious snippet in the Times Sunday magazine last weekend that sums up all that is wrong with this country:

THINK YOURSELF SUNNY
By Edwina Ings-Chambers

Hurrah, it’s the summer (almost). Except, hold on, this is Britain, so it’s almost guaranteed that rain will stop play. So, how can we keep thinking sunny?

- Reframe your thinking. “Focus on season indicators that aren’t about the weather,” says the cognitive behavioural therapist Rhena Branch. “New growth, flowers, window boxes, the smell of barbecues and all those other things that say it’s summer.

- Don’t be a perfectionist. “The British are famous for their intrepid spirit,” says the life coach Nina Grunfeld. “You can still head to the beach, even if there’s just a glint of sunshine, but take a cardigan.”

- ”If it does rain, try to imagine you’re a creature that loves rain, like an otter,” says Grunfeld. “Ask yourself how an otter would enjoy the rain, and see how you can bring those sorts of feelings into yourself by, say, putting on waterproofs and venturing out.”

Edwina, I don't mean to piss on your parade, but I AM NOT AN OTTER. Neither are you. Perhaps you are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. A nation shouldn't have to tap the depths of its intrepid spirit to head on a picnic. WWII ended in 1945.

Welcome Spring and War Pigs

Today brought the first sun we've seen in England in months: short but delicious bursts of sun punctuating an otherwise impassive cloud cover. And the rain stopped long enough for the slate paving in our garden to dry. This convergence of good fortune lured us outside for a while to observe a variety of spring activities underway all around us:

Male jays, tits, robins and blackbirds battling one another to impress the ladies. A solitary daisy growing out of the lawn. Lady bugs gathered on a fence. A white tailed bumble bee queen searching along the planting beds for a place to set up her colony. Pear and apple blossoms soaking up the intermitent sun. And, new visitors--a beautiful pair of goldfinches at our feeders.

It's been a long, dreary, rainy winter. I can't begin to describe how numbing and depressing it's been. Interminable rain. Skies so heavy and low you slump to avoid them. A damp, penetrating cold that no amount of tea, or wool, or upturned collars can ward off.

When we last lived in New York, I regularly prepared for my morning subway commute by cranking this before leaving the house:



This morning, perhaps out of disdain for the climate, we turned to vintage Black Sabath. I've always felt a place's climate shapes the kind of music produced there. It couldn't be more true here. Despite it being 7:45 am, the music somehow felt cheery; it at least gives you a sense of having a fighting chance against the gloom: