Try as I might, I can never get a grip on January. Every Spring, Summer, even Autumn, even during that limbo week between Christmas and New Year, I resolve that January will not get to me – with its nothing to look forward to, its damp, its unremitting greyness, its nondescriptness, its dire bathos, its inevitable Blue Monday on the third Monday of the month, when apparently people feel at their most depressed. Each year I think I’ll knobble January, tame it, bridle it, harness it, wring some good out of it and set it to work to achieve something, but invariably the sheer obstinate sourness of it overlays and saps everything. You would think this year it would be worse, with no skiing or spring holidays lending a bright if distant patch on the horizon.
However, this year I can give in with dignity; there will no humiliation in defeat because by knuckling down and submitting to January will be a way of defeating an even more oppressive tyrant than January – Covid, of course. It’s a relief to simply agree to be miserable, imprisoned, bored, disappointed and browbeaten by January; like a long term prisoner or resident in a care home, we can outwardly comply and resign ourselves, but inwardly rebel by nursing those little grievances, plot little subterfuges and celebrate little defiances.
Yesterday, urged on by the indomitable Deirdre, we did just that by undertaking the most ridiculous project imaginable for a couple of an age that should know better. We decided what was essential travel and what was a child-care bubble and we all went swimming in the open air lido (heated) at Hathersage in air temperature of -1 and with snow falling so heavily you could barely see to the end of the pool. I think it was a misunderstanding by the
grandchildren to designate me a wuss just because I got out after 20 minutes. It was simply the responsible and selfless act of needing to get the car warmed up for what could have been a torturous ride home. What I did excel at, with no qualms, was the huge bacon, egg and sausage cob I bought from a cafe and consumed on a pub car-park wall, unashamed of ketchup all over my face. With such spirit how can January or Covid defeat us!
The fact was confirmed as we drove away, and I wish I had a photo to prove it. Sitting in the car park, with the snow plummeting down and piling up around their feet, two picnickers in separate cars parked beside each other, socially distanced yet obviously sharing time together, in their folding picnic chairs sheltering beneath the raised lids of their car-boots. Hats pulled down and swathed in huge coats and scarves they reminded us that we belong to a race that will always find a way to outwit January. We’re a force of nature and for that reason I’m sharing Ted Hughes poem which reminds us that however hard the ground, it can’t stop the snowdrop forcing its way through.
Snowdrop - Ted Hughes Now is the globe shrunk tight Round the mouse’s dulled wintering heart. Weasel and crow, as if moulded in brass, Move through an outer darkness Not in their right minds, With the other deaths. She, too, pursues her ends, Brutal as the stars of this month, Her pale head heavy as metal.