This approaching period is my favourite time of the year. The changing of the clocks, the arrival of summertime, the stretch in the evening, they are all signs that this time is upon us. The time of possibility, of change, of shedding off the miserable skins of the long winter; drying off the incessant rains that always arrive in March and make us wonder if we have the calendars right at all.
I’m not sure why I should be so positive about all of this. Being an Arian, my birthdays invariably clashed with Easter, as it does again this year, so. Maybe that’s it. This was also a time of year when I fell seriously ill eight years ago (but thankfull fully recovered ) and it was a time when as a student, I got the news one morning that my father had passed away suddenly.
So you would think that this is a time that would carry with it the clouds of sad memories, the real sense that bad stuff can happen at good times. But it’s the converse actually. I was just 22 when my Dad died, and in my last few weeks of college, living in a bedsit in that house with the wishing well at Wellpark.However, the strongest memory of that late April was the tumbling in priority of the college exams, and the increased golden light of the longer evenings that seemed to stretch ahead with solitude, silence and sadness.
So too when I was in hospital, looking out as the golden sunsets cast orange streaks across the rooftops of the city. And those signs of change have stuck with me since, that when this light arrives, and when the sun takes its time going down in the west, it represents a chance to recover our best selves and embrace life.
Light is one of the greatest gifts that mankind has been given. There are many who do not have the benefit of it and their light comes through imagination and touch, but maybe light is a feature that we don’t appreciate enough. The way the light falls impacts on nature, the lived environment, what we do and when and where.
This weekend, the clocks go forward by an hour, allowing us all to stretch our activities into the longer evening.
This time three years ago, we had loads of light in that first Covid summer, but nowhere to go apart from the confines of our 5km circle. Indeed, they were many who were confined within the four walls, and to them, went my sympathy for the sacrifice they made at that time.
It seems a long time now from this weekend until the clocks go back in October, but these years are not built to last anymore and time flies and before you know it, if you’re not careful, we’ll be at the Galway Races and counting down the weeks to Christmas.
So get out and enjoy the extra light that we are to be given from this weekend. Find a new way to use it, appreciate a bit more the role it plays in enabling us to enjoy things. Now, where’s that clock.
