January 2021 News From no.fifty6 - Snow and Stories
Posted on 31st January 2021 by Julie and David Thomson in General News.
In normal years January is a month we like – the promise of new beginnings, a stark beauty to the landscape here. It is laid bare and invites you in to explore even on the coldest day. You can come back to No.fifty6 for a warming cuppa, shrug off the boots and relax. This year of course is different to normal, but so much stays the same and that gladdens us. The juxtaposition of enduring cycles of nature, permanently changing but oddly and ressuringly the same, have a therapeutic effect on us. We still look forward to seeing you all again, whenever that will be, but for now we explore and the landscape is of course beautiful.
January is always our coldest month and we have had 2 episodes of snow which have blanketed The Somme in a white winter coat. At month end all the snow has gone and it is chilly and damp.
The fields are either seeded with new growth appearing, or deeply ploughed. In the cemeteries we have noticed the first shoots of spring flowers breaking ground and the days are drawing out, it is now gone 5.30pm before the chickens go to bed
Snow on the ground always brings to mind Wilfred Owen’s poem "Futility":
Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds—
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved,—still warm,—too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?
