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I’m dreaming of a White Easter
I’m dreaming of a White Easter…
What’s happening to our weather? Here we are, the end of March, Easter in two days’ time and the temperature’s struggling to rise above zero. At least here in Somerset we’re lucky enough not to have snow, but it’s no surprise to hear that the cold air is coming from Siberia. It certainly feels like it. The jet stream, I understand, is way down in Spain, giving the Spaniards the warm, moist weather we normally have. Hard to imagine that this time last year we had one of the best springs on record, temperatures in the twenties, people getting sunburnt in March. It was the first year that neither my husband or I were in full-time employment and we made the most of the fine weather, out every day in what my husband calls the “two seater” (he’s a Jeeves and Wooster fan), driving down to Kilve and up on Exmoor, going for long walks. We’re so lucky to live in this part of the world, on the edge of the Quantock hills, within easy reach of Exmoor and the coast. When we were little my father often used to take us children down to the beach at Kilve, often late in the day when he had finished work and everyone else was coming home. It only took about half an hour and he could walk along the cliffs while we children played on the beach. It wasn’t much of a beach actually: mostly rocks and pebbles, no sand, but we liked to jump from rocky outcrop to rocky outcrop, or crouch on the edge of rock pools looking for limpets or crabs or just poke around with twigs in the seaweed-infested water. The seasons were more predictable in those days. Summer was summer: long, warm, sunny days, autumn damp and misty, winter cold and frosty, spring new beginnings, blossom on trees, daffodils blooming. We may have had rainy days out of season, summer storms, cold, wet springs, but we didn’t have the extremes of weather we have nowadays, the torrential rain and floods, glacial winters and white Christmases, endless rain the whole year long. The seasons are less clearly defined, the temperatures less predictable, all this, we are told, is thanks to global warming, and we are the ones responsible.
Bethany Askew is the author of eight novels: The Time Before, The World Within, Out of Step, Counting the Days, Poppy's Seed, Three Extraordinary Years The Two Saras and I Know You, Don't I? She has also written a short story, The Night of the Storm, and she writes poetry. Two more women’s fiction books have been accepted for publication in 2020 and 2021 respectively and she is currently working on a new novel. In her spare time she enjoys reading, music, theatre, walking, Pilates, dancing and voluntary work. Bethany is married and lives in Somerset.