Tales from Coles
The moon will be full to bursting this evening, and if the sky is as clear as it was yesterday, it will be a bright one – a big clear dimpled and textured disc in the night sky, so clear you could reach out and touch it. When the moon is like this, it always reminds me of the film poster for the 1902 film ‘Le Voyage dans la Lune’, minus the rocket of course!
“The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said ‘Bother!’ and ‘O blow!’ and also ‘Hang spring-cleaning!’ and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat.”
What is Love? Love is a suit of armour with which to protect the soul, it is a shield to deflect the arrows of doubt, it is the sword to vanquish hate. Love lights the path, it warms the soul, it holds us up and it drives us on, it is the net which catches us when we fall – we have little if we do not have love.
The signs are easily missed, but their gradual emergence lifts the heart a little each time you notice them. The afternoons stay lighter a little longer, the mornings too are waking a little earlier, it’s not the full dawn chorus, but there are some hardy birds out there giving a good tune, and the eager robustness of snowdrops belies their delicate visage – these little chaps are always first to the party – the winter weather may still be in full flow, but nature pulls back the curtain a little and gives us these glimpses of brighter things to come, and how welcome they are.
These are the weekends for hunkering down – the rat-a-tat-tat of the rain against the window, a swirling wind calling the tune to the dancing trees, the interloping sleet a portent of colder things to come – the garden is a riot of inclement weather. When mother nature is in a mood like this, best keep our heads down and wait for the storm to pass.
We had a power-cut on Thursday afternoon – ‘Lights Out, No Throttle’ – everything stops. Our vulnerabilities at loosing something which we take for granted only come into focus when we loose it. You may be able to read a book with the light of a simple candle, but you can’t ship it to the other side of the world, operate the till for a Click & Collect order or even answer the phone, without electricity. And so it is for the myriad of interconnected systems and processes which make the world go ’round and we take for granted – we rarely think twice about them. The power company have been able to restore some of the supply, enough for us to work, but they’re still working at the problem in a large hole in the ground behind the shop – we should never take for granted the power behind a simple switch.
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