February is a miserable excuse for a month. My least favourite by a country mile. It really is the pits. As I say in my book On the Moor:
February is, without doubt, the crappiest month of the year: Christmas long gone, and still winter drags on! By February, it’s getting beyond a joke. As my friend Mary used to say, there’s a reason why they only gave it twenty-eight days.
Alongside February—although, technically, only one of them is—glum November and doleful January seem positively, well, positive. That’s quite an achievement. February must really suck to put November and January in any sort of positive light.
But not this year! This year, February is not going to get to me. I’m not going to let it win. This disconcertingly mild winter, I’m going to enjoy February or die in the attempt. Nothing spectacular. No special trips. Nothing like that. I’m just going to try to find and savour one or two things that aren’t quite so dire about this longest of months. Like the snowdrops under our cherry-tree, transplanted many years ago from my parents’ garden. My mum loved snowdrops and couldn’t bear the idea of my own garden being without them. They were her favourite flowers. I’m incapable of looking at snowdrops without thinking of my mum—not that I’d want to. Thanks, snowdrops! Thanks, February! Thanks, Mum!
…And then, this morning, on the first day of February, a pair of blue tits checking out the nest box in our Scots pine. A spot of pre-season house-hunting. They won’t be putting in an offer just yet, but a sign of things to come, I hope.
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