Hope

As the sunrise begins to slowly, but relentlessly, inch back along the eastern horizon towards Midsummer's Day, Mother Nature is already beginning to respond to this gentle stimulus.

After weeks of being entombed under an eclectic blanket of frost, snow and ice, the ground is enjoying its new-found freedom. In our garden, the shoots of spring bulbs are pushing through the soil, breaking cover and bringing a splash of fresh green to the bare earth.

The pre-dawn air is filled with layers of sound, as one by one, the chorus singers rediscover their voices, in grateful response to the rise in temperature. The ever-sonically-present Robin is ramping up the volume and the beat, to re-affirm to all those visiting cousins just whose patch this is. Great Tits are nowhere near as melodious, but make up for it with their powerfully-rendered bisyllabic notes. In this neck of the woods (figure of speech, we don't live in a wood, more's the pity), we don't often see a Song Thrush, as we do not have enough of the relevant habitat. But at least now we can hear them again, that jaunty repetitive bunch of phrases uttered in defiance of Man, weather and, most significantly, other thrushes.

Whilst Winter has not yet dealt its final card, here is the groundswell of opinion from all living creatures, that they will endure and survive to welcome in the next season. It may not be perpetual motion or time travel, but pedalling along on the cycle of Life is the definitive green movement.