Blues skies and bursting buds offer hope for us all
In the summer of 1665, the diarist Samuel Pepys walked the plagueravaged streets of London and felt the sultry summer weather indicative of a great peril coming his way.
“The season growing so sickly that it is much to be feared how a man can ’scape having a share in it,” Pepys wrote in his diary entry that day. “For which the good Lord God bless me, or be fitted to receive it.”
Obviously the circumstances today are very different. As yet we are mercifully counting the British deaths in the low hundreds and not the many thousands that perished as a result of the Black Death.
And as Covid-19 continues to tighten its grip, I see in the weather not a portent of doom but a reassuring sign that spring is here and with it that ancient sense of a world renewing itself – of being part of something bigger.
Let me count the ways: this week I heard the first chiffchaff of the year in my local woods, and spotted the first skylark and lapwing in the moors above my city, the latter birds were sweeping in and about each other’s spoon-shaped wings with a joyful abandon that made a mockery of self-isolation. The ring ouzels are back, too, I’m told, though I haven’t heard them yet.
From my study window, the birds continue to build their nests and a hawthorn I planted over winter is coming into leaf. Out back, an ash tree, whose species is coping with its own devastating disease in the form of ash dieback, stands tall and proud.
This weekend – and beyond – the sun is due to keep shining. The nights will be cold, and even frosty in parts, but during the day it will feel warm upon our backs.
This is the weather to coax us outside; to free us from our computer screens and the rolling news bulletins and help remind us that these blue skies and bursting buds are symbols of hope for us all.