So that was February

How was it for you?

We certainly have had some days of snow early in the month:

If February give much snow,
A fine summer it doth foreshow.

But, on the other hand, the last few days have had the air of Spring:

If February is dry
there is neither good corn nor good hay.

So we’ll have to wait for the Met Office to officially declare how wet or dry February has been.

There were several of us wombles out and about this morning tidying up after the weekend’s warmth brought the crowds flocking to Roseberry.

And a fast dissipating temperature inversion to welcome in the first day of the meteorological Spring, and the first of March, when the crows proverbially begin to search.

Pinch, punch, the first of the month.

And today is also St. David’s Day, the patron saint of Wales. Whilst modern politicians cheerfully post messages wishing Welshfolk a ‘Happy St. David’s Day’, such pleasantry wasn’t always the norm. Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary in 1667:

…  and in the streets, in Mark Lane, I do observe, it being St. David’s day, the picture of a man dressed like a Welchman, hanging by the neck upon one of the poles that stand out at the top of one of the merchants’ houses, in full proportion, and very handsomely done; which is one of the oddest sights I have seen a good while, for it was so like a man that one would have thought it was indeed a man¹https://www.facebook.com/pepysdiary. “Diary Entries from March 1667 (the Diary of Samuel Pepys).” The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 2020, www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1667/03/. Accessed 1 Mar. 2021..

I am not sure if this typifies an English trait, or is indeed a characteristic of Homo sapiens, but it shows that the targeting of anyone from a different tribe has been with us for a very long time.

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  https://www.facebook.com/pepysdiary. “Diary Entries from March 1667 (the Diary of Samuel Pepys).” The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 2020, www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1667/03/. Accessed 1 Mar. 2021.