When was it that
we last had snow? Real snow I mean: the sort
that lasted for weeks on end?
There was
that snow we had in '62. It must have been
with us for at least two months. The Parish
stood still: all but froze up, winds howling round every corner.
The Morris' were
not long returned from abroad - Kurdistan. No snow there, I hear you say? Why, yes there was. Winds bore down on us straight from Russia (or so it was
said). We walked around in sheepskins and
goatskins.
Returned back
home, taking up residence in the Parish, we might have thought to an end to severe
weather: extremes of cold, biting winds, all the rest of it.
The Parish, essentially calm and serene, could surely not treat us to
rigours of climate such as we knew in Kurdistan?
And then it
happened: snow on snow. We were told on the
wireless the root of the problem. Winds from Russia, most unusual,
were the cause of the biting cold. Oh dear! All of this sounded a bit too familiar. Were
the winds searching us out: could it be us, we thought to ourselves? Rather like Jonah, we had thought to escape. Were we the cause of all the bad weather now
descending upon the Parish?: the howling wind; the deep snow; the frozen pipes; the
overworked plumbers; the chesty coughs; so on and so forth?
Soon, no doubt,
some sort of inquisition would call to be made: a finger of decision pointed, decisive, in
our direction. Would they return us whence we
came: back to the lands of climatic extreme?; hurled over-board like Jonah of old?; back
to the cold of Kurdistan, there to be
found by the Russia winds?
But no. All at
once, the smiling face of Mother Parish showed itself in balmy spring. Things were better than ever before, so it was
said. The extreme weather had killed off all
sorts of bugs and beetles; so that everything was growing with unwonted splendour. No
longer it seemed that we might be extradited. What
had seemed so awful was turning out well. We
were allowed to stay; are here to this day.
And never again,
so far as I recall, has there been any question of snow of the kind that we had that year. The winds from Russia must have
pointed themselves elsewhere: certainly not towards the Parish. Such that January wears a
different complexion than in those times: no snow at all; nay, voices of spring soon to be
heard. But, then, what about the bugs and the
beetles: what about them?
Well, since you
ask - I have a soft spot for those creepies and crawlies, humbler denizens of the Parish. They are not nearly so bad as the scorpions and
snakes, and the cockroaches too, our living companions where we came from. They are not nearly so bad, either, as those cold
winds from Russia that finish them off – and, just as likely, finish us, too.
And now, what, I
ask you, do we learn from all this? It must be, I think: …. ‘here’s to the
springtime lying ahead and don't let’s be too hard on our bugs and our beetles’.
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