February

It's 10:49pm and I'm led in bed with a hot water bottle stuffed down the front of my dressing gown.  It's cold and wet outside and I'm sick of the mud.  Storm Ciara made its way through Oxfordshire on Saturday night, tearing the guttering off the front of the cabin as it did so.  Thank you very much.  You're welcome.  I'm sending Storm Dennis over next week.  Delightful.  Tell him that the guttering around the back still requires removal.  And while he's at it, he might as well take the roof off.   

The wind turned bitter when we saw the back of Ciara.  The sort of bitterness that gets into your bones and stays there.  There's nothing worse than rain and a bitter wind.  They're troublemakers together and they're troublemakers apart.  This is the time I yearn for signs of blossom amid long and unfriendly spells of gunmetal grey.  I dream of Spring doing the Haka against the quivering cold squelchy mess of Winter.  A Winter that knows it will lose before the game has begun.  It subdued Autumn but it always loses to the talents of Spring.  

The one saving grace is that daylight is returning to early mornings and evenings and I can feel that little green and yellow-breasted bird in my heart begin to chirp again.  A tentative voice but better than the silence that came before it.  She felt my spirits lift as I saw the first of the snowdrops bloom.  Fair maids of February!  The daffodils won't be far behind.  Have faith, little bird.  Slowly but surely she's finding her voice as this part of the world warms and lightens.  Slowly but surely.  And then as Winter yields to the fresh white linen of Spring, the little bird performs a blossom of song.  A song of pure joy, and a song so beautiful that it lights a fire within my iced-over lake of a heart.