Westport Road near Clifden, Co. Galway. Photo by Mateusz Delegacz on Unsplash
It’s the middle of February, and there’s a Fatima sun shining through the sleety, snowy, silver-grey skies. The weather is worse than that of slow January, which was cold but clear and dry. Fresh and invigorating. February has no time to waste, even in a leap year, and cycles through the seasons accordingly, from blue to whited-out grey to brown to yellow, fingers crossed we might even get an orange day before the end of the month. February is blue, the colour of the wide-open and exposed sky tainted silver by vicious cross-winds that cut through you. January was dry, steady, unchanging, timeless, endless – especially if you endured it with yourself too on the dry. The pubs were full on February 1st, and I’ve a feeling it’ll become the new Easter Sunday for those proud enough that they stayed off it for a cold month.
It was the 8th of February before we knew it, January having crept in and stolen an extra month – though that might have had something to do with the election – and February will be gone before we know it as well.
After the snow today the horizon to the west looks dry, the light of life hangs like a gas under shadowy clouds, giving glimpses of hope, of promise, of the future (or maybe the past seeing as you’re looking west), of something different to the big puddles of wet we have to trudge through one by one on the way home from work. The days are longer in the evenings, by at least twenty minutes or so on the western seafront, an extra twenty minutes of life in every day.
There’s snow in the Dublin mountains but there’s a grand stretch in the evenings. The stretches seem to be coming faster now this month, to the tune of ten minutes a day, or so it feels after January’s slow and steady wake. We’ll nearly have light for the Six-One News soon. Even the grand stretch is more hurried in February. Whereas January has a purpose, even a much maligned one, February doesn’t feel like it has a place for us anymore. At least you’ve the Six Nations and the GAA Leagues to put a bit of structure on it, though they’re only Mickey Mouse leagues anyway, aren’t they? Spring is only the warm-up for summer or autumn.
Blink and you’ll miss it; you’ll be sorry when it’s gone all the same.