Don't rush it away

Share

February is the month in which we are supposed to collectively grit our teeth, hunker down beneath the wet, grey skies, and will the arrival of spring.

But is midwinter a time of year which exists only to be wished away?

Now that we have computer screens not only on our desks but on our phones, we can see brightly lit pictures anytime we like. Advertising boards depict a reverse Narnia, where it is always summertime.

But this is not the reality which matches our lives, and is it an existence any of us would truly want?

Byron described his beloved as the “best of dark and bright” – and he was enchanted by a world in which shadows are not chased away and there is room for mystery.

I finally made the trip to Tintern Abbey a few weeks ago and the melting snow on the hillsides had turned the nearby river into a surging, dark torrent. Everything was wet, and white woodsmoke from chimneys curled up towards low clouds which reached down into the branches of the glistening trees.

The “ruined” abbey was the home of busy monks but since its dissolution in 1536 it has become a monument to stillness. In the last 474 years it has probably inspired more people than it would have done if it had remained a functioning place of worship.

Monks were early cinematographers. They knew the magic which takes place when light strikes a stained glass window and understood how it can kindle the imagination.

But today the great window frames nothing but the sky. Yet this picture of shifting cloud is more haunting than many a picture in the Tate Modern.

It stops you in your tracks with its minor-key magnificence. “What do you make of this experience of life none of us asked for but all of us have been given?” it seems to ask.

The extraordinarily successful Harry Potter and Twilight books are set in places far away from the blanket blue skies of California. In fact, Twilight’s Washington state location has much in common with the wet, forested environment of rural Wales.

The astonishing popularity of such “young adult” fiction suggests that millions of people appreciate venturing into a world where the noise and primary colours of MTV videos are swapped for a territory where dark exists alongside bright.

Such stories are illuminated with flashes of the courage and tenderness which cut through our own reality.

The modern utopian dream is that through a miracle of chance you win a lottery and escape winter forever in a state of independent bliss.

But it is among the mixed palette of colours we find in the everyday that the bold glow of friendship and the phenomenon of family is at its most brilliant and defiant. And this is a real winter wonderland.

Originally, a Thursday column.