In my Enid Blyton head, spring is a time for skipping through green lanes with banks studded with pin-pricks of colour from primroses and violets that look like tiny fallen stars. Birds would sing in the spring from the hedgerows and the weak sunshine would still kiss your face with warmth.
It is hard to spring joyfully through a lane weighed down by a multi-layered coat, strangled by swathes of wool wrapped around your neck and barely able to see under a woolly hat that seemed hell-bent on blinding you. As an aside – if anyone knows of a warm hat that does not slide down your face so that you cannot see or ride up on the top of your head so that you look like a drunk pixie, please let me know.
We have not had the frosts in this part of Norfolk, nor the snow… yet… but the cold wind has been harsh – especially now that we are on the home run towards some warmth. It’s like winter’s final throw of the dice to ensure that we are really, really grateful for the change of season.
My pace when out walking has increased to full Benny Hill-esque scuttle and the long days of growing light, standing gazing at the primroses are just a daydream.
This kind of cold does make you so truly grateful for any hint of warmth from the sun though. The joy of finding a sheltered spot somewhere to hide from the wind is completely overwhelming and you find yourself grovelingly grateful.
Tha’s easy t’git ahead o’yerself
Jack Kett, Norfolk Poet – from his poem Howd Yew Haard
When the March sun start t’smile,
When the arth dry out, an’ that handle right,
An’ the warld begin t’look green an bright –
But howd yew haard fer a while!
As I’ve said before, I was lucky enough to be taught by Jack Kent, whose poem on the spring is quoted above. In spring he would lead his class from the school along the road from Cawston towards Jimmy’s wood to look for catkins, pussywillow, butterflies and all those other harbingers of spring. It was so exciting to go along the road in a two by two crocodile, out of the classroom and under the blue sky to the woods. He taught us all the joy in nature. He taught us to look for the changes in the seasons and to celebrate them – even the icy wind and the frost – because without these changes then we would not have the spring flowers, or the autumn leaves or the golden fields of wheat in the summer.
We didn’t know we were learning at the time, but if you ask many of us who were lucky enough to be taught by him I think you would find a love of nature and an understanding that you take the rough with the smooth and the harsh with the soft. It wasn’t gently, modified nature that he taught, it was reality.
And so, when I’m stumbling along a path such as the one above at Holme-next-the-Sea, and the wind is cutting through my layers of wool and technical fabrics, I still see the beauty in the first green bud that appears, I still have to stop and listen to the birds sing and I always give thanks that I can get out there and just be in nature. Mr Kett taught us so much, but in spring he taught us to howd yew haard, summer is around the corner.
Norfolk Notes 