It’s time to savour the joys of our lovely home
THE spring equinox yesterday heralds in a season of rebirth and fertility in the Northern Hemisphere. It marks the sun crossing the equator from south to north.
During the equinox, the sun shines directly on the equator and daylight and darkness are almost equal at 12 hours each. Coincidentally, this year the spring equinox occurs at the same time as a full supermoon, which will look brighter and bigger than a normal full moon, if the night sky is clear.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the spring equinox is the first day of astronomical spring. Meteorologists, however, maintain that spring begins on March 1.
Whether the seasons have their origins in astronomy or meteorology, the anticipation of good weather has put a spring in our steps.
The days are noticeably longer, summer time is coming on Sunday, March 31 and the trees are sweetly blooming. Warmth, growth and greenery is returning. Birds are singing and building nests while animals are mating and producing offspring.
How wonderful it is to listen to the bleating of lambs in the fields and to marvel, like Wordsworth, at ‘a host of golden daffodils, beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze’.
The spring equinox restores our energy levels after the cold, dark winter.
It makes us appreciate how good it is to be alive and living in a beautiful country.
It whets the appetite for exercise, sport and outdoor life. While Tennyson maintains that in spring a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love, mine turns to sea swimming in Fenit, walking in Banna Strand and the mouthwatering anticipation of Kerry’s journey to victory over Dublin in the All-Ireland senior football final! BILLY RYLE, Tralee, Co. Kerry.
Beachwear buffoonery
EMILY O’Connor’s arrogance is breathtaking.
She complained that a Thomas Cook flight crew shamed her by insisting she wear a jacket over her crop top, which looked more like a bra, on a flight from Birmingham to Tenerife (Mail, Monday).
She banked on most people on the flight being typically British and not wanting to get involved, then moaned when it didn’t go her way. She is a typical self-entitled millennial who believes that just because you are told to do something doesn’t mean you have to or that it’s right.
When she leaves university, she will discover that in order to fit into the working environment, a lot of us have to do things we don’t like.
I’m amazed that Thomas Cook felt the need to apologise after this incident.
It should make its policy less ambiguous: no beachwear on flights.
Ms O. ROBERTS, by email. ...CRITICISM of the outfit Emily O’Connor chose to wear on her flight misses the real offence and disrespect she showed her fellow travellers.
It’s unhygienic to have bare flesh against upholstery where others will have to sit.
Bars and nightclubs enforce a ‘shirts must be worn’ policy for hygiene reasons rather than taste.
The plane incident shows that, once again, bad manners and selfish behaviour trump respect for others.
I am surprised that the person involved has been portrayed as a victim. A. R. CATER, by email.
Fines not enough
FINES on social media giants are not enough to curb their bad practices. Legislation should target the ads that appear alongside anti-social social media content.
Advertising income is the lifeblood of these monster companies, and if they are denied this they will amend their ways.
There will be no incentive to advertise on social media if it is seen to be counter-productive to a company’s image or business.
P. WILLIAMSON, by email.
Scrambled Brexit
THE whole Brexit saga is becoming somewhat of a Humpty Dumpty affair. Are we in for a hard Brexit or a soft Brexit? A Brexit with a long extension or a short extension?
A Brexit that may need lengthening or extending or a Brexit with or without a happy ending? Actually it’s becoming very clear that Brexit needs a large dose of Viagra, for it seems that Brexit is fundamentally impotent, like a scrambled badly boiled egg, neither soft or hard.
A horribly charred and badly beaten egg!
Then there’s the backstop aspect of Brexit with or without a soft Irish border or hard Irish border.
Brexit is unwittingly creating nothing but the most awful Palace of Westminster disorder!
Brexit, whether soft or hard, shortened or extended, or otherwise, will never satisfy the DUP, the Tories, the House of Commons, Corbyn et al or the EU.
Brexit is like Humpty Dumpty, all the Queen’s and Leo’s and Mrs May’s horses and all the EU’s men, can never dream to be sure to put a soft or hard-boiled scrambled Brexit Humpty Dumpty egg together again! PAUL HORAN, Assistant Professor School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin.