Embrace the thrill of a winter’s day as if it’s a Hardy poem
A WINTER’S tale, then, up and down the country over the next few days. Bright, bitterly cold, with hard morning frosts and the occasional wintry shower in the north. I confess it is my very favourite sort of weather.
I still feel a childish thrill of excitement when things turn properly cold. I expect most of us do, even as we moan to strangers while stamping our feet at the bus stop or walking out of a steamed-up shopfront with collar turned to the stiffened wind.
I like the clarity of a morning frost and the way the days come to a sudden end as if somebody has pulled down a blind on proceedings.
In his great winter poem, The Darkling Thrush, Thomas Hardy called it the “weakening eye of the day”.
Spotting veins of ice in a pond or canal fills me with inordinate glee. Just imagine the 17th century when the winters were so cold they could hold a “Frost Fair”’ and drag whole elephants on to the River Thames.
Nowadays we are forced to deal with far balmier winters. That of 2015-2016 was the warmest winter for 147 years and last year was not much better.
December 2016 was milder than average by 35.6F (2C) across Britain and as much as 37.4F (3C) over parts of Scotland. On Feb 20 2017 it was 64.4F (18C) in London – even as the winter coats were still on sale in the shop windows.
I remember it well, sweltering on the tube on my way back from work. Were I then alive I would have been much more content at Braemar in east Scotland on Jan 10 1982, when -81F (-27.2C) was recorded – (the coldest temperature logged by the Met Office over the past century).
So today I will embrace the bristling stillness of a proper winter’s morning. Who knows how many we will have left?