Ne’er cast a cloot. . .
March 31, 2010
I’ll hardly be alone in recording this, but March has just gone about things entirely a**e backwards this year. In like a lion, out like a lamb, that’s March’s shtick, containing as it does – within a week of each other – both the official start of spring and the start of British Summer Time. (Through how many millions of gritted British teeth have those last three words been said this past day or so?) At the start of the month I was drinking coffee in the garden, shedding my jumper as I marvelled at the warmth in the sunshine. Today I was repeatedly lashed and soaked and frozen by howling gales and pelting sleet, the latter slowly thickening into heavy snow, depositing a couple of inches onto already drenched ground before reverting towards rain as the temperature jumped up a degree or two. By the time I walked home it was all melting fast, and I don’t know when I’ve squelched through such a combination of slush and soddenness. The Meadows were under as much water as snow, still covered in white but patched with great big lochans, some of them spilling over onto the paths, where even along the least wet bits it was like splashing through a barely-frozen, inch-deep puddle, because none of the melt could escape into the grass. It’s a hoor of a lot of water, come down hoor of a fast, in one form or another. All we need now is for the thermometer to plummet back down, and the whole town will be even more of a skating-rink than it was in December and January. Though I suppose perhaps the worst winter in 30 or however many years it is (I get it mixed up with the recession) had to have its last blast. It’s certainly suitably savage.
If karma ever applied to Scottish weather, those hosts of poor shivering daffodils I passed en route would be heralding the best summer in years. Utter caprice being in fact the prevailing principle, we’ll wait and see as ever, keeping a weather eye open for special deals on Vitamin D supplements.
