December 21st

The Winter Solstice is upon us. In my simple mind, from now on in, it is but a short, downhill ride to Swifts, Wheatears, chalk downlands full of butterflies and Australians beating us at cricket. I've only just become aware of the fact that the additional daylight that we can now expect does not come to us by courtesy of the mornings lightening a little bit earlier and the evenings darkening a little bit later in equal measure. Confusingly, the mornings will still get darker until early January. And just to mess with our heads further, the earliest sunset has been and gone two weeks ago! But the net result is the same - longer daylight, and this will be triggering all sorts of responses in our wildlife. The pagan in me stirs... I feel as if we all ought to be marking this event as our ancestors clearly did. It was a marker for them, a reminder to plan ahead for crop sowing, to monitor winter food stores and to give thanks for surviving the cold so far and to hope that they would continue to do so. Our modern day version is to check the bank account, look in the fridge and turn up the thermostat. It might be a whole lot easier, but it lacks a bit of spirituality, doesn't it.