A colleague, when talking about our plans for this month, reminded me of the saying ‘When March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb’.
And it couldn’t be truer.
As we battled through the storms of Dudley and Eunice at the back of February – I had a particularly wild journey to Headingley Cricket Ground that I don’t wish to repeat any time soon – it’s always difficult to imagine the sudden warmer temperatures and longer evenings.
Not that we can’t be caught out by a cold snap. I seem to recall the Beast of the East in 2018 lingered into this month.
But as we move through March we’ll begin to pick up the rhythm of business that the spring brings. Holidays will be booked and after work drinks sat outside will be eagerly anticipated as well as the 9 to 5.
The past two years have been dominated by COVID-19 issues. This month will mark the start of what have been circumstances that none of us could comprehend would ever take place in this country.
Words such as ‘lockdown’ or ‘furlough’ were meaningless to us but became common in our vocabulary.
I remember writing at the turn of 2020 that now Brexit had been put to bed with the big majority for Boris Johnson in the last general election I wondered what our media and political class would obsesses about next.
The pandemic has dominated since and I do worry what will be the topic du jour as COVID restrictions fade away.
Commentators that were all-knowing about trade deals one minute then became epidemiologists are now morphing into experts on the Russia/Ukraine situation.
I do realise this is a bit much coming from someone who is writing a column, which is hopefully read by many people, but it’s my fervent hope that people are left to just get on with their lives.
Enough with the lecturing and scaremongering. The ‘I know best’ mentality has never sat right with me, unless it’s from people who have genuine expertise and experience in a particular subject.
And that’s why I like that line from the poem.
More lamb than lion is needed from loudest voices in our society as we all look to pick up the pieces from two years that were far more turbulent than even Dudley, Eunice and Franklin could throw at us.
