Som­er­set saves the day

-- February 21st, 2011 --
Parish House

Here we are, in the grayest of Feb­ru­ary weeks, liv­ing through weeks and weeks of rain punc­tu­ated by the rare after­noon of dry, if not out and out sun… just dry, at least.

Feb­ru­ary is light­ened for me by my birth­day, which far from becom­ing less impor­tant as I get older, really does pro­vide a moment of excite­ment in this dull month… then we res­olutely ignore Valentine’s Day because we hate 1) pink, 2) roses, and 3) choco­late.  Then we wait until the end of the month for John’s birth­day and then at least we can stop pre­tend­ing to enjoy Feb­ru­ary and just move onto the Sea­son of Mud That is March.

Which is why it is so impor­tant to enjoy the school Half-Term break.  You might well ask: how on earth can there be a BREAK from school when we just returned from Christ­mas a month ago?  And yet, this Feb­ru­ary, with var­i­ous pres­sures brought to bear on us, and no one feel­ing par­tic­u­larly cheer­ful, the idea of a week off was strangely welcome.

Avery had been invited out to the coun­try­side (“expect con­stant rain, bring Wellies and warm lay­ers”, oh joy), so…