The Grand Stretch aside, for me it still feels like Christmas
WHEN you get a lot of weather, you need a lot of weather expressions. I’ve never heard people outside Ireland describe the Grand Stretch in quite as lyrical a way as we do, and as far as I know, soft days only ever happen here. But I also love ‘you won’t feel it now till Christmas,’ or till summer, or till whenever: it’s an expression I like to use myself with which to terrorise people, most frequently in January.
It’s effective, because there’s more than a grain of truth in it. Even when the calendar is complacent about the amount of time between now and then, our bodies know different. Whether we like it or not, we are biologically hard-wired to adjust with the seasons.
But where on Earth are we supposed to be now? I could say that you won’t feel it now till Easter – and a glance at the calendar will confirm that it really is just over a fortnight away – but my body is still protesting that it’s not just winter, but kind of Christmas. I have daffodils outside when everything inside me is screaming holly and ivy.
And I know it’s not just me. Down at my local shops – my weather vane in ways both literal and metaphorical – everyone is complaining that they don’t know whether they’re coming or going.
We wander round down there, wrapped up to our nostrils, stepping over the snow in the car park that is now black with exhaust fumes, a big vitamin D-deficient mob, still shopping like we’re not sure what’s coming and muttering darkly about a forecast that warns of more snow this weekend. I don’t know if retailers are actually shifting Easter eggs, but I do know from my two children who work in clothes stores in town that customers are staring at the bright colours of spring and summer clothes like they are some sort of shocking conundrum and then buying another jumper instead.
One year, people were treated for sunburn at the St Patrick’s Day parade. That was 1999. I remember it because I was visiting from London with my toddler, heavily pregnant with her usurper, and suddenly found myself without any suitable clothes for an unexpected heatwave.
That was the year I wore my mother’s shorts to the St Patrick’s Day parade. But that was a blip; a welcome spike in temperatures set against a regular late Irish spring – just as the year it snowed was a minor and brief seasonal set-back. If this is a blip, then it seems to have been blipping for months now.
I don’t know about you, but I am actually craving sunshine now. Waiting for the Luas the other morning, well wrapped in my fleecy anorak, hat and scarf, I suddenly found myself in a shard of brief, direct sunlight. I took off my hat and scarf and turned my grateful face up towards it, even though it was too cold to remove my gloves. My body responded in much the same way it would if I ate a single Roses chocolate in November: well, that was just perfect, now where’s the rest?
DERVILLA in SuperValu asks me if I’d any holidays booked. And I know that lots of people have booked sunshine breaks – as much in desperation as anticipation – but right now, the very idea of stripping off any warm layers of clothes outdoors is horrific, no matter how much my body might be begging for sunshine.
Bear in mind that this is not an early Easter. The clocks go forward next weekend. Usually, that’s a much anticipated event; the beginning of the Grand Stretch in earnest, a sure sign that summer – not spring – is almost upon us.
Right now, they may as well tell us that there’ll be a light rain shower on Pluto; that’s about as much as the clocks changing means to our poor huddled masses. Honestly? Right now, I look forward to not ‘feeling it now till Christmas’. At least then it will mean that our confused bodies can be assured that last Christmas really is finally, truly over.