Friday 24th February

What amazing weather.  After that sub-zero deep freeze of only ten or so days ago we are here in the warmest February day I can remember.  Whether it will be a record we will have to wait to find out, but it feels like it should be.  The forecast was right, as it seems to be more and more often these days, I particularly like the ways they present it – on the BBC of course, with the camera panning over the country and the shadow representing cloud cover thinning into brightness, very easy to understand, though an old-fashioned part of me still hankers for those milli-bars and High over Scotland and Low out in the Atlantic and the curved weather front with bumps on one side and sharp little thorns on the other. When I sometimes see them now in a newspaper it seems like a language from another time, which in a way it was.

I went for my habitual morning walk without a jacket on, and even undid my cardigan as the temperature rose; it was forecast to hit 16 in London, which is 61 in old money, but it felt warmer out in the sunny park.  And oh, the flowers looked so happy; snowdrops prancing in the sun, half-raising their pretty white heads up to the sun, and the purple and gold blazing crocuses everywhere, while the majestic daffodils stood waving their crowns in the slight breeze.  Birds were everywhere too, looking around them as if amazed that spring had come so soon.  I was half expecting to spot a squirrel or two, but maybe they need more than one good day to wake out of their hibernation, stuffed full of nuts from last autumn.  It was a real delight, and maybe just the sort of day we need amidst all this gloomy economic news, and Syria getting worse every day, and now an oil embargo by Iran, which is bound to end unhappily.  So step out into sunshine and shake off those Winter Blues for a day or two, who knows when the next Big Freeze will descend on us. It may very well be Global Warming, and if so someone will pay for it later, but for now enjoy it while it lasts.