A hint of rain in the air.
Today there was just a hint of rain in the air. In fact I think it must have drizzled almost accidentally and then apologised for doing so in the next breath. January can be such a tease can't it? There was a suggestion of a light drizzle from the sky and then it changed its mind. January can also be very playful and capricious because when the rain does arrive it does so with a certain style and panache.
In fact you've got to hand it to January because when the heavens open that rain just crashes to the ground with an almost businesslike intent. But today the rain was almost teeth clenchingly frustrating. The temperature is definitely dropping slowly but surely and the chill is ever so bitingly noticeable. There was a palpable shiver in the air and my fingers began to yearn for heat and warmth.
It hasn't quite reached freezing point and the possibility is that the fox I saw last night was simply taking a leisurely stroll in utter darkness. He may have been looking for a bed and breakfast hotel for the night although this was hard to tell. Still it's comparatively mild and I can now see the roads rather than the all enveloping fog that just seemed to hang heavily in the night sky like yesterday's curtains.
I've heard rumours that people have spotted roses and tulips in their garden which almost beggars belief. Now when was the last time you saw spring and summer flowers blossoming quite nobly at the start of January? It's rather like waking up in the middle of June and discovering thick snowdrifts, huge mounds of snow on the ground just piling up remorselessly, workmen silently gritting the roads. Soon they'll be telling us to turn on those giant industrial fans and declaring a hosepipe ban. Whatever next? I'm sure global warming may be more than just innocent speculation.
Oh yes there was that stunning heatwave of 1976 when my parents garden looked more like a concrete bowl rather than the pristine green grass they'd been used to. There wasn't a patch of grass for miles and wherever you looked all of my mum's roses looked in desperate need of a downpour. So when the heat haze just hovered over our neighbourhood we just looked up at the flawless blue sky and thought of England, middle class England, working class England, suburban Britain and the whole of the home counties. What a summer! what a climate!
And yet during those mid 1970s winters the climate ran true to form. Of course it was cold and icy because that's what we'd probably come to expect in December, January and February. I used to look at our lonely and frightened shed just standing at the bottom of my parents garden and felt terribly sorry for it. It looked rejected and discarded by society, unwanted and hurt. almost offended and insulted. Day after day it would sob its heart out, a grey, dark figure whose hope had all gone. At times it looked almost tearful and hopelessly disconsolate, sad and perhaps deliberately overlooked.
Still here we are in early January 2017 and the roads are still mysteriously quiet. The pavements are beginning to resound with more and more people. Those marching feet are beginning to hit the ground with a ringing resonance and the gradual return to work will probably reach its crescendo next Monday. The railway platforms will be jammed solid, the fares have gone up for what seems the umpteenth time and Sadiq Khan, London's new mayor will probably get all the blame if there are leaves on the line. Oh to hold down onerous positions of responsibility and just pretend that it wasn't our fault.
This is the lull before the storm and you can probably hear the sighs and sharp intakes of breath on every Tube train platform. Rows and rows of people going to work almost dutifully are now almost fuming with barely suppressed anger. It's an early and cold January morning and your train is at least three years late. What's happened now? Not another defective signal or perhaps a buckled rail track again. It's time to read the same Metro newspaper article and try to make head or tail of the latest world developments.
Then every passenger looks despairingly at the electronic board with its destination and arrival times. Hold on. Don't tell me I've got to wait 25 years for the next Metropolitan Line train to Chalfont St Latimer. Can I claim ample financial compensation for a train service that is more or less non existent? Oh for the inadequacies of the London tube. How much longer can we be expected to tolerate this tiresome journey to work. Maybe they will get their act together one day. And yet those passengers now look very hollow cheeked and weary, shrugging their shoulders resignedly, looking furiously at their watch and then finding that time has just stood still. The big station clock is now crawling pathetically towards Late O' Clock and the boss is steaming like a pressure cooker.
And yet the season is now winter and the month is an adamant January. It's stating its intentions quite clearly and will just move at its own pace. January has five weeks and is determined to take as much time as it likes. There's no rush and besides there's plenty of time. Any one for a hot chocolate and jam croissant. And besides there's Burns Night towards the end of the month, the darts on the telly and of course ski-ing perhaps from the snowy mountains of Switzerland, Italy or Austria. It looks terrifying and impossibly dangerous and yet your admiration is unstinting for these intrepid souls who sneer at fear.
So there you are? You've booked your ski-ing holiday to some picturesque ski-ing resort at Chamonix or St Moritz or maybe closer to home at Aviemore. You've bought those very striking boiler suits, shrewdly invested in a decent pair of skis and you remember where you were when Franz Klammer, the great Olympic skier from Austria, once hurtled down the slopes like a man on a mission. That year Klammer tore up the field as if they were invisible. Klammer won a richly deserved gold and the world acclaimed a ski-ing dynamo.
It is January everybody. The year stretches ahead rather like some detailed Underground train map. You may be sure that it'll probably take an eternity to get to the end of the Northern Line or the Jubilee Line but it may be worth it in the end. For many though January at least, will seem like the slowest tortoise in the race. It may seem as though it's dragging its feet, biding its time, considering its options, assessing the ground and developing its own momentum. But this is far from being the case because January knows exactly where it's going. It has a far sighted vision and plan. Good luck January. We're with you all the way.
Of course February may feel like another country, another city even, maybe another time zone on another planet. But January has a freshly wrapped feel about it, a distinctive marker for the future, a sense of the brand new, pure and unblemished, free of any kind of pressure. It's the first month of the year and who knows Donald Trump may yet emerge as the greatest and most competent President of the United States of all time. Stranger things have been known to happen but then what were the odds on Christopher Columbus discovering America? In January we have implicit belief.
Brilliant!
ReplyDeleteSam and Lucy