Earth , Wind and Fire .

It has snowed and it has laid . The icy rain is not moving it very much at the moment . Someone has been out and built a small snowman . The thing stands conical and pristine on a small patch of grass  . I am trying to think of spring and there it stands mocking me . A jolly snowman . It was all I could do not to go over and kick the little bastard over .

I've looked at the BBC weather site . It's going to get a lot warmer and we will have actual sunshine on Friday . Oh hurrah , hurrah , hurrah . I'm off the wall with Michael Jackson , I'm hearing it through the grape vine with Marvin Gaye , Kool and the Gang have turned up and brought Earth , Wind and Fire with them . Kid Creole and the Coconuts are warming up .......I imagine you get the picture . In short , I am in celebratory mood .

So we are putting a down payment on summer . Trusting that those lyrical lovely days will come again , that the seductive landscape may sweep us into it's arms again . Now . obviously , I can't put my sandals on and bare legged begin my stroll through summer . But I can, as they say , make a down payment . A deposit . Stake my claim as it were .

So duffel coats , stout boots , woolly hats , thick socks .

We eat hot salty chips and drink fizzy pop . We watch the ferry , looking like a show boat from the American south , blazing with lights as it comes in . There are tiny pinpricks of coloured light all along the far shores . Enclaves of warm cosiness dotted in the darkness.

I climb out of the car hair blowing like a Medusa . It feels as if the wind could easily slice the features off my face like a knife cutting through a lemon . I peer down the cliff , through the stinging rain to the beach . Far out a line of white foam froths and bubbles . The tide is out . But we know , don't we , that as the tide will turn and come gushing in , the year is beginning to turn too .
A gleeful thought if ever there was one .