18 January: Sunday's child

Is there a touch of spring in the air? Wishful thinking perhaps, but sunrise is now 10 minutes earlier than before the solstice, and sunset a good half hour later. Burn’s night is a mere week away, a significant day-changer as the northern hemisphere gains 5 minutes more daylight, adding extra minutes at each end of every day towards the brightness of Valentine’s, Candlemas, and heading for the spring solstice. Even now the long shadows resemble sundials rather than dark hollows, snow and ice have melted away under the strengthening sun (for the time being, anyway) and the pace is beginning to quicken as little birds chirp, snowdrops bloom and daffodils in green hoods shoot from the earth. The prettiest crescent moon in the southwestern skies is a benign sickle of hope.
Yesterday on our daily walk in the park we saw all our fellow dog walkers at once, taking advantage of the goodness of the midday sun, tails wagging joyfully as they greeted one another enthusiastically with a sniff on the bum. That is the dogs, not the walkers, to be clear; we humans are carefully socially distanced as becomes the British at the best of times, never mind during a pandemic.

It all inspired this illustration of a ridiculously jolly Sunday’s Child: “The child that is born on the Sabbath day is bonny, and blithe, and good, and gay”.
Stay gay, my friends!

​Thanks for visiting, see you next week!