Friday 15 March 2013

of snow and hope...

I struggled a lot with myself as to whether I should be writing this or not... mainly because I am not at all in the mood to praise anything or anyone right now but, quite the contrary, I wish I could just storm in a river of expletives about this terrible winter and the snow that falls again!! Again!!! Mid-March and we are still freezing our bottoms here, still wearing the heaviest coats and the warmest boots and the scarves and the hats and still, at this time of the year, we have not seen any flower growing, how could they, the moment their little heads came out of the dirt, they got covered in the white of their death...

Yep, not a good mood this one of mine... But then I thought "ok, let's try to turn this around"... hmmmm... Then I remember a Dutch colleague of mine who said to me a couple of days ago "the worse the winter, the better the summer" or something like that, you get my point.... So, if he is right, there is this hope, almost a promise, that we will get a marvellous summer this year, isn't there? And this, for sure, would be better than shoes! And it would also allow us to wear some of this year's gorgeous sandals, wouldn't it? Double the benefit!

I never thought I would be fed up with the snow, it was always such a rare treat in my childhood that I had come to idealise it. But now I'm really tired of it and I want it to stop, I want the winter to come to an end and I want to stop covering myself up in multiple layers (much like an onion...) every time I go out of the house... I feel miserable and my cold induced misery is only brightened by the hope of a bright, long, warm, sunny summer! In the absence of anything better to write about, and feeling all the more now the need to focus on the positive, I choose to make this my "better than shoes" subject this time: my hope for summer! Word of honour, just the thought of it puts a smile on my face ;)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are from a warm place, with little snow. I am from a cold place, but not quite cold enough and definitely too wet for show. When I was a child, snow happened in picture books.
Now, snow is what happens sporadically from October to December, solidly in January and February, and sporadically again in March. Not a centimetre of snow that melts after three hours, but six or ten centimetres at a time, which has still not all melted after two weeks above freezing.
It is nice. I like the snow. I like wrapping myself up in warm layers, pulling on mittens, and wearing a woolly hat. I think everyone looks lovely, in their winter clothes. I even quite like getting out at six thirty in the morning and shovelling for twenty or thirty minutes. I like to go out when it is 20 below freezing.
But this winter is just being silly, now. Two years ago, my first winter here, there was snow, lots of it. But then, in February it was 20° above freezing. It was t-shirt weather and people sat outside to eat lunch and drink coffee. Then it would get cold and snow again, then be warm for a week. It was fun. Last year was just solidly minus twenty for four weeks, but then it was spring. This winter, though, is not even properly cold, and really needs to realise that it is spring's turn to play with hour hemisphere.
No, winter, it is spring's turn, put the hemisphere down. No, you've had your turn. It was a long turn. No, you had a long turn. I don't care if you do want to freeze until the trees explode, it's too late. You had your chance, and now your time is up. Spring want to play. Look, spring is crying now, because you won't stop messing about. Just stop. Thank you.
Now, spring, stop crying, dear. We have work to do. There's a lot of work to do. What about those crocuses? They should have been out weeks ago.

Nina said...

No, no crocuses here yet, I have been looking forward to them but I guess they let their little heads out a couple of weeks ago (when, the joke is, "spring came on a Tuesday"...) and then were covered in the snow that followed just days later! So, just let's all hope together, mind over matter, to wake up spring from her hibernation ;)