Lilacs out of the dead land

April is the cruellest month - you bet it is. These light, chilly days, the sudden glimpse of primroses by a burn or a lone violet amidst a tangle of dead bracken: all these bring a curious mixture of hope, cheerfulness - and the sense of life passing. It's the cyclic thing again; the more uniform mid-season times, like a perpetual Trinity season, perhaps, make one less aware of the passing of years, while the sudden exclamations of delight over the signs of the season trigger transience all too readily.

I can remember with unlikely clarity being fifteen or sixteen at this time of year. We used to take days away from the city in the moveable Easter holidays of that time - mostly train rides to Helensburgh or Milngavie or Balloch, with at least one remembered trip to Dunoon. We didn't have a car, and all four of us went together - there was no question of staying at home to swot for O-grades or whatever. But what I most remember is the sudden sense of self - the scent of my own, slightly tanned skin, overlaid slightly with the first perfume I had ever owned, combined, bizarrely, with the small horror of a new smallpox vaccination on the scar of my infant one - for that was the era of a sudden requirement to have a valid vaccination certificate if you wanted to travel abroad, presumably because there had been an outbreak of smallpox in the UK such as the one described here.

I remember I went with a friend to my first ever opera at this time of year, and within four days of vaccination. I saw Bizet's The Pearl Fishers, and during it my arm began to itch ferociously and I began to feel distinctly odd. When I read the possible complications of vaccination here, I don't wonder at the latter, but at the time it was a matter of a disprin and getting on with school work.

So - a sudden welter of memories brought on by a bright day with nothing else to think about. Larkin's description of the lighted rooms inside your head  slips unsought into my own head, and I nod yet again to the poet's adept nailing of the minutiae of life. It's as well that normal life is full of music and people and books and East Enders ... did I mention that in these days we didn't even have a telly?

Out of the dark ...

It's amazing how a sudden change in the weather can make such a difference to life. Perhaps I should qualify that. When I lived in the city - and it's 37 years since I did - the weather was a backdrop, no more. I noticed if it wasn't raining, and can recall the peculiar smell of sun-warmed dust mingled with privet flowers in the late summer, but I have no recollection of prolonged gloom or subsequent depression on my part. Even in Dunoon, when I was at work, the main drawback of awful weather was the trail from the carpark to the main entrance - you could be soaked before you knew it - but I often felt how cheerful the yellow-painted English corridor was on a dark morning, and enjoyed the obvious delight my classes took in my similarly-painted classroom. It didn't really cross my mind to care about the weather - I was too busy, and didn't get out much except at weekends.

Now, however, it's different. This is the first winter I haven't gone abroad at all, and it's had an effect. The past week has been distinguished by a complete absence of sun - the rain hasn't fallen every day, but it's been dark. Some days it felt as if we were stuck on the edge of a huge ocean, as we could see nothing of the other side of the firth. Everyone you met mentioned it. It was hellish.

And then came today. The morning was like all the others - grey, misty, a hint of drizzle in a slight breeze. Until suddenly the wind got up and the clouds rolled back. The photo above was taken about 5pm, and shows the high tide completely covering the beach below the shore road at Toward. We walked along here, and out the Ardyne, and I felt like a new person. A squadron of oystercatchers flew overhead on some important mission; their cousins shared a field with the sheep and a scattering of  curlews. The waves were brown and green in the low sunlight, and it was almost unbearably bright, as if we'd been in a cave for a week. The light reminded us, oddly, of the shore south of Monterey in California at the same time of year, though there were no tales of mountain lions to terrify.

And then the sun set and it was dark again. But the effect remained - and with it the thought that, as Larkin said, "It will be spring soon, it will be spring soon."

Evensong

The gloom has descended again. The rain has returned, and the wind is already driving the sea over the prom in great white flourishes. According to the excellent Met Office site the weekend is going to be fiercely windy, though apparently not unremittingly wet. And just at this time of day, just as darkness (as distinct from grey miserableness) falls, I'm aware of the power of dusk to evoke memories, emotions.

Larkin knew all about that - the sun's
Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely
Rain-ceased midsummer evening -
in his poem The Old Fools; I used to enjoy awakening that realisation in the minds of Higher English students and seeing the lights come on as they made it their own. And I think of the bleakness of the time just before the evening meal in hospital, and how I wept when my no. 1 son left at the end of hospital visiting time the day before no. 2 son was born and I stood looking at the dark road as the car disappeared and felt completely bereft. There's something about the dying of the day which speaks to us of the final dying of the light, and the telly's not yet assumed its cheerful dominance of the evening and the book has been set aside to save some of it for later (oh, the horror of having nothing to read!) ... enough.

Usually these moments are combatted in my life by physical activity - the walk regardless of the weather, the tea with a friend at the end of a hike. But today I have swum vigorously before spending the morning in mental activity. Surely enough to keep me going? I shall think instead about a question which came up as we discussed the sermons latent in a set of lectionary readings. (Not a current set - Year C, if you're wondering). For it's a fact that as often as not the gospel rakes up a current issue, and for an amateur preacher (for want of a better expression) that's dangerous territory. If you follow this blog, you'll understand when I say that Jesus' refusal to let his followers call down fire on a Samaritan village that wouldn't receive them made me think of the the current situation in Palestine. So I'm looking forward to the session where we discuss how we deal with the bee in the bonnet that starts to buzz in response to the Gospel.

It's almost dark now, and I can forget the weather for 15 hours. And in the dark, there will be no bombers, no flares, no sirens, no death from the skies. What's a spot of rain?

"Home is so Sad"

For the benefit of all to whom I have quoted it over the years, and because I always think of it when I'm about to set off on my travels, I thought I'd reproduce Philip Larkin's poem here as I finish my preparations for another jaunt. Actually, I was always more aware of the pathos of the abandoned house when I was a child - perhaps because we tended to go away in the summer for 8 weeks at a time. At that time in my life, eight weeks felt like forever, and I recall how our house seemed totally strange when we returned at the end of the summer. Even the end-of-term feeling from the end of June seemed preserved and ineffably sad as we prepared to start school again at the very end of August, in the days when the summer holidays were not rudely terminated in the middle of the month. I think Larkin captures all I have ever felt about this phenomenon.

Home is so Sad
by Philip Larkin
Home is so sad. It stays as it was left, Shaped to the comfort of the last to go As if to win them back. Instead, bereft Of anyone to please, it withers so, Having no heart to put aside the theft And turn again to what it started as, A joyous shot at how things ought to be, Long fallen wide. You can see how it was: Look at the pictures and the cutlery. The music in the piano stool. That vase.

A fiery Christmas

Having recovered from yesterday, I feel moved to share with anyone still sad enough to boot up their bloglines on Boxing Day a glimpse of the culinary splendour at The Blethers yesterday. I was a tad concerned that Metaxa might not burn as spectacularly as the usual cooking brandy (rather like Larkin's "washing sherry") but behold: a veritable conflagration. It tasted amazing too.

You can find the original of this, and several other photos of over-indulgence, at Christmas 2006 from edublogger. I was too busy being a domestic goddess again to do much snapping - unless the snapping at said Edublogger for getting in the way counts. But harmony reigns at The Blethers this morning, and I've almost managed to clean the spatters of turkey gravy from the interior of the fridge (don't ask). Now I intend to drink some coffee and indulge in an old-fashioned pastime.

I'm going to read a book.