Seasons come and seasons go, but complaints about the weather never wane.
As we reach the end of a dreary January here on the Northwest coast, we dare to hope that conditions will improve. Perhaps the sun will come out once or twice a week for an hour or two. Is that asking too much? Or, failing that, at least there may be an end to the moaning and griping from friends and relatives back East who’ve had more than enough snow this winter.
The thing about weather is: it can always be worse. Some of us take comfort from this. After all, when you live somewhere cold and dark for nine months of the year, you can take a kind of grim satisfaction in the fact that at least you don’t have to dig your car out from under two feet of snow every weekend. Nor do you have to contend with heatstroke and failing air conditioners. No indeed, here in the Shire all we need are three or four thick sweaters, a layer of Gore-Tex, an industrial strength espresso machine and an impenetrable shield of denial and we can get through winter’s gloom. And spring’s, and fall’s for that matter.
But there’s no denying that at this stage in the calendar year we are not immune to the siren song of sunlight, however fleeting and cold it may be.
Thus, last weekend, when the clouds thinned just long enough to allow some glittering rays to reach the Sound, some of us threw on our parkas and scampered down to the shore to enjoy the moment, before it vanished, and we trudged back to our dark bungalows to dream of brighter days ahead.