Thursday, 19 December 2013

'tis the season

Saturday sees the Winter Solstice - the shortest day of the year. And yet sunset is already, just, starting to creep back, getting a minute or too later each day even before the Solstice. Even if we can't or don't notice this, it does in some ways reflect the contradictions of these last few days before Christmas.

A majority are still rushing about, without time to do what they think they have to do.  And then there are the others who did it all ages ago and are now having to pretend to be part of it all.  Expectation is, however almost universal. And yet in little more than a week's time the world will move on and that feeling will have gone. It's all over very quickly, the way we do it now.

Nature - rather like Norfolk - does it differently. We may have passed the shortest day, but winter is only just starting. Storm and tempest seem to have been in ample supply in the last few weeks, but paradoxically there has not been a lot of rain and very little cold. Just like last year in fact, and the year before.  The rain and the snow and the cold will come, and maybe if it is like last year it may stay with us rather longer than we might wish.  But the fact it is naturally out of our control is good, so different to our modern Christmas with its artificial and manufactured rush.

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