Turned Out Nice Again by Richard Mabey

Author:Richard Mabey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: On Living With the Weather
Publisher: Profile Books
Published: 2013-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

4

HALCYON DAYS

IN MEDITERRANEAN MYTHOLOGY, the kingfisher (alkuon in Greek) was believed to incubate its eggs on the surface of the sea, during the spell in November when water and weather were always calm, and which was later known as St Martin’s Little Summer. The phrase ‘halcyon days’ subsequently began to be used for any periods of peace and general happiness – and, because these are so often dependent on the weather, for those blue remembered days in which sunshine and bliss are inseparable.

But we shouldn’t forget the role of the kingfisher in this, that spark of iridescent azure and cinnamon that is like a flash of fair-weather lightning. In these post-mythological times, of course, kingfishers tend not to raise their young in autumnal, waterborne nests. But one September morning in the Norfolk Broads, a fledgling perched briefly on our boat as we were having breakfast, just feet from our scrambled eggs. The day that followed wasn’t the least bit exceptional in terms of its weather, but it became halcyon because of the benediction of that small flighted rainbow. The kingfisher stood in for the sun, becoming a thread in that complex weave of metaphor, ancient association and real physical experience through which we make sense of the weather, and its effect on our feelings.

And because these associations are so personal you can have a halcyon day at any time of the year, and probably in any weather. Coleridge, overjoyed by fatherhood, decreed in the exquisite poetic benediction to his sixteen-month-old son Hartley entitled ‘Frost at Midnight’, that every day should be halcyon to him:

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to

thee,

Whether the summer clothes the

general earth

With greenness, or the redbreast sit

and sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare

branch …

Even when the weather has been incessantly miserly, you can make a halcyon day from a widow’s glimmering mite. The winter of 1979 was notorious for its relentless gloom. On 22 February, I was walking down London’s Lower Regent Street, that shadowy chasm of tall buildings, when the sun suddenly peeped through the clouds for the first time in weeks. Quite spontaneously, almost everyone stepped off the pavement into the thin ribbon of watery sunshine in the road, giggling like children in delighted surprise. I’m pretty sure I recall a few brief dance twirls being executed too.

And as the year progresses we all have our personal halcyon moments. On 19 April, 1873, John Ruskin logged an ‘Entirely Paradise of a day, cloudless and pure till 5; then East wind a little, but clearing for twilight. Did little but saunter among primroses and work on beach.’ I suppose that sums up a climatic Shangri-La most of us would be happy to inhabit. It’s the kind of day when we tumble into hyperbole: ‘Aah, it was like the First Day of the World!’ But one of my spring halcyons, in 2003, was a bit more like the Day before the First Day, as if I’d somehow sneaked a glimpse of seasonal evolution still a bit short on its finishing touches.

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