We Must Have Faith In Spring

Despite the Arctic winds which are sweeping down on my little corner of England as I write this, I am pleased to celebrate the start of spring. Though I witness the passing of the seasons year on year, I never lose my fascination with this simple phenomenon caused by quirk in Earth’s axis. While summer can be a golden time of warm days and long nights, they are more often where I live something of a disappointment that never quite lives up to our entirely unrealistic expectations of what weather should be like at 55 degrees North. Spring offers no such problems. If spring is about anything, it is rebirth, an end to the dark times and hope for the future. It is this potential which sets spring aside, reminding us that we all have the chance to be happy, successful and prosperous. It reminds us that things could, just could, be marvellous.

We should of course consider that there are those for whom this does not apply. Firstly, of course, I’m thinking of the Southern hemisphere. I’m pleased to say that the blog of Candi’s Dog has now been read on every continent except Antarctica and we’re still hopeful of finding a theme that would appeal to the penguins. I suppose, the flip-side of my upbeat paragraph above for all you upside-down people of the world is that all your best times are behind you and all you have to look forward to is cold, dark misery. In short, it’s all downhill from here.

The other person who this also does not apply to is our very own Matthew of Candi’s Dog. While bands may argue about musical disputes, we save our most bitter and intractable arguments to the big philosophical questions like ‘Is Brad Pitt the worst actor in the world?, What is the correct pronunciation of the word ‘reprise’? and in this case ‘When do seasons begin?’ On this last point Matthew differs from the rest of the band in claiming that we still have weeks of winter to come. After several years of arguing we decided to check the website of the MetOffice (who provide our national weather service in the UK) and settle this once and for all. Much to our dismay we found out we were all right. It seems, Daniel and Stephen had been using the meteorological calendar with Spring starting on 1st March, while Matthew adheres to the astronomical calendar which is 20 days behind.

Whenever you think they begin, the seasons represent the cycle of life and tell us that, no matter how bad things may get, better times are just around the corner. And with the onset of Spring, my mood is now buoyant and I’m not going to let this astronomical calendar crap get me down. So if you are entering colder times, remember it won’t last forever and you can set a reminder to read this blog again in September.  There’s something to look forward to already!

Crocus image – By Thomas Wolf (Der Wolf im Wald) (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Penguin image – By Liam Quinn from Canada [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons