Epiblog for 27 February 2010

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Relentless, rainy and raw, just about sums it up. And when it hasn’t been relentless, rainy and raw, it’s been sleeting, or snowing. I was struck the other day by the fact that I couldn’t actually remember the last time when I was able to walk out of the house in the sunshine, just get into the car, and drive off somewhere, confident that I would get there without sliding off the road into a ditch, and that the car would make it there and back without breaking down. Sadly, none of these are givens any more. The car is on its last legs. It has served me faithfully this winter, always got me home, never yet left me stranded, but it now needs a new water-pump, and every time I drive it I am risking the engine seizing and causing major damage.

All of this I discovered on Saturday when with much tutting and various sharp intakes of breath, Father Jack adminstered the last rites to the water pump and told me I could drive it to London if I wanted, but if I did, it would undoubtedly sieze and turn the engine into a lump of scrap. Knowing my luck this year, he is probably right.

Work has been unrelenting as well. Tight deadines notwithstanding, I have at least managed to get down to some of the more knotty, thorny problems that I have been putting off, in some cases since before Christmas. And just as well, as we’re already two months into the year. Even if I did spend most of January hibernating from the snow.

So, “February filldyke” has been and gone and next week it is March, which comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, or so my old Granny always used to say. It remains to be seen whether she will be proved right this year. I have a feeling March may come in, and go out, as a lion. The fireproof glass on the front of the stove has cracked as well. It’s the end of winter, and we’re all hanging on by our fingernails.

Tig has shown a marked reluctance to go walkies in the sleet and the rain, and Kitty has spent a lot of time curled round in her cat-bed on the hearth. I don’t blame either of them, to be honest.

If it’s not the weather that makes me want to hibernate, it’s the politicians. The election is here with a vengeance, even though Gordon Brown will inevitably leave it until the very last available minute to cling on to the vestiges of power. Both the main parties are lying to the electorate about the cuts that will be imposed after they gain power. The best the Conservatives can come up with is the vacuous “Vote for Change”. Change for change’s sake, can, of course, always be a change for the worse as well.

Still, amongst all this doom and gloom, there are signs. Signs of spring, I mean. The Victorian Lodge across the road, in the gateway to what was the park leading to the cemetery, has a stone trough in its garden planted entirely with snowdrops, and over the weekend these have broken out, making a dazling point of white that draws your eye, even if, when you first notice it, you are several hundred yards away, standing at our front door, like I was.

And maybe this enforced leisure of being without the car while the garagemen swarm over it and dismantle it and put it back together again, creating a huge bill in the process, is another sign. A sign that there is also a time to sit and contemplate, that we shouldn’t always be like Jehu, driving furiously in his chariot. Sometimes, sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes and the grass grows by itself.