The Darling Buds of May: A Calendar of Emotions

Everyone's grumbling. Spring seems sadly noticeable for its absence. It's nearly June. Every day we grow more hopeful. But every day we put another jumper on, watch the gutters overflow, rush out to measure the hailstones. Coldest, wettest, windiest? Whatever, the extremes caused by climate change are the new normal, a discombobulating normal.

But this furious May has been great for dramatic skies, the kind with the hashtag #StormHour, the kind used as backdrops to TV weather reports. The presenters smile wryly at the British weather, pat it on the head. But this tempestuous teenage phase is a symptom of someone in dire need of professional help.

There are treasures in this depression. Indigo and gold and rainbows, glitter and blackbird song.  Blackening skies are head-turners against fields of sulphur-yellow oil seed rape. Stormy sunshine irradiates the juicy chlorophyll drench of new leaves. When towering white cumulonimbus give way to dark skies, hurry outside. You're in for a treat. They are tremendous, those clouds. They add mountain ranges to the flat Cambridgeshire landscape where I live. They bloom and tower and erupt. They are mushroom clouds and anvils. When you see that distinctive anvil shape in the sky you'll know it will soon be hammering it down. Never mind getting wet. It is exciting, impressive, beautiful.

In a few days' time when the temperatures rise I will watch spring trip itself up and get overtaken by summer. Like my ten and thirteen year old niece and nephew who I saw for the first time in eight months, May to June is all growth spurts and excitement, noise and glee.

Tuning into the seasons can be grounding. Cyclical sensory stimuli such as the fragrance of a bluebell wood, the sight of ants swarming, the sound of screaming swifts, the odour of autumn fungi or the feel of crunching through winter snow create a calendar of emotions. But even the most benign and delightful of these annual markers and associations could be negative triggers, associated with upset or unease. This idea is explored in The Emotional Calendar by John R Sharp. It explains how seasonal cycles influence people’s psyches and moods. I wonder if the feint melancholy I feel when I sense summer ebbing at the end of August is sadness at summer's loss? Or is it tinged with a memory of losing childish freedom and innocence as I was pushed into my first ever term at school?

Another book to wade through to distinguish metaphor from brute reality is Weatherland - Writers and Artists Under English Skies by Alexandra Harris. Proust's madeleine and global warming, on the same page.

A favourite I've re-read for a treat is Four Fields by Tim Dee (I skipped the globe and focused on the field nearest me). It is celebratory and vigorous and rapturous, written by a man in love. Greenery is harder to bear. If you read it to the end you'll discover why.




(Photo by Jo Sinclair)