Jonathan Dodd‘s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
I’m not much of a winter person. I have to admit to a sense of relief when I see catkins alongside the road I’m driving down, and the snowdrops and crocuses and eventually daffodils are all lovely to look at, but mainly they signify that the winter of my discontent is coming to an end.
Occasionally in the winter we get a day where the sky is a crisp and clear cut-glass blue, and the sun shines brilliantly on the ground below, blinding me with brilliant reflections that transform the muddy puddles and treacherous frost for a while, before it sinks so low that I can’t see out of my windscreen, even with the visor right down.
Some sort of set menu of weather
I don’t mind the cold of winter, and I wouldn’t even mind if we had some sort of set menu of weather. Say, a month of wind and rain followed by a covering of snow that persisted for another month or two, and then gradual receding of the snow and ice, with lovely buds and small animals poking their noses out of wherever they’ve been hiding. That would be nice.
But instead of this orderly weather, every winter we get a smorgasbord of every kind of weather in a complete lack of pattern, or we just get week after week of weary colourless dark and dank conditions, which sap the soul and mildew the mind and aggravate the animus and probably soak the psyche too. For weeks I have to be careful where I put my feet, because of puddles or ice or semi-frozen muddy mush, none of which is clean or clear.
A small nozzle with a yellow plastic lid
Driving isn’t even fun or easy either. Apart from the aforementioned blinding sun, there’s the spray. I have to make sure I’ve always got a spare bottle of that blue liquid which glugs into that bottle under the bonnet. You know the one. You lift the bonnet, and there it is, a small nozzle with a yellow plastic lid, about ten centimetres down amongst the pipes and wires. In your freezing and damp hands you have a hefty bottle which you raise wobblingly and attempt to aim accurately. No chance. You’re lucky if you only pour half of it down there somewhere inside the works and onto the ground, and unlucky if it ruins your shoes.
That’s another thing about this fluid that’s now coating your previously-clean engine (and shoes). If your oil runs out, there’s a warning lamp. Ditto low on fuel. Your battery can’t fail on you without a warning, and your engine and brakes will tell you when there’s a problem. You even get little lights nowadays if you don’t close a door properly or a bulb fails. But there’s no warning when you run out of windscreen washer liquid.
You give it a tiny timed squirt
One moment you’re driving along in the damp air, swishing your windscreen wipers every thirty seconds or so, when visibility becomes almost impossible, and you give it a tiny timed squirt to avoid using all of the windscreen washing liquid too soon, and the next moment you’ve got nothing but a dirt-encrusted windscreen, windscreen wipers smearing noisily, and not a drop coming out of the nozzles. That’s one of the moments in life when it’s easiest to realise that you’re in trouble.
I once had a car with a completely broken windscreen washer motor. I found this out when I poured the liquid in and the entire contents went straight through onto the road. When I tried to operate the motor, it made a clattering noise and bits fell off. I liked driving that car in the rain, because I could see out of the windscreen. I managed most of the time the rest of the year by using an old squirty bottle and spraying the windscreen from my open driver’s window. Those were the days…
My favourite thing is the fuzziness
But all that’s just the stuff that gets on my nerves, and it’s only the repercussions of the improving weather. I love the changes that happen. My favourite thing is the fuzziness.
In winter there are lots of moments when I wonder why so many trees still have leaves, and then there’s a moment which I always miss when all the remaining trees become bare and spiky. Every view for many weeks is ridged or backgrounded or edged with the bare branches or twigs of these trees, and you can see the sky through them, if there is in fact any sky to see and not a pale grey backdrop.
Cold with the expectation of becoming warmer
Conversely there’s always a moment in the spring when the buds start to appear. You may not notice immediately, but these stark tree outlines suddenly go fuzzy, because every one of them is suddenly burdened with buds, which break up their sharp pointedness. I love that moment, because that’s the moment when I know that spring is really here and it can’t be stopped. Spring is relentless, it won’t stop, and the world will become warmer and greener and cleaner and more comfortable.
We’re not there yet, and as I write it’s late at night and pretty cold out there. Not too warm in here either. But my feet are cold in a different way to the coldness of last week. Then they were cold going on colder still, and now they’re cold with the expectation of becoming warmer. It’s a thing called hope. And hope is always even better when the thing you hope for is pretty much guaranteed to happen.
May your crocuses bring you joy and your trees become fuzzy, and may your feet feel warmer soon.
If you have been, thank you for reading this.
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