Rosher.Net

It is so clear, at this time of year, just how essential to my mood is the touch of the Sun. It’s been a long, mostly wet, miserable winter. Not helped of course by political drama but, ignoring that as much as I can, it’s all about the Sun. The snowdrops popped up about a week ago, and now carpet the ground, but that celebrate Imbolc, they don’t mark it.

My year is guided by the Sun, simply because of the changing sweep of the sunrise over the Cotswold escarpment that makes the horizon from my study window. Calendars come and go and fixed date festivals have their place I guess, but it’s not that simple, or controlled. There is a fixed point though, and we circle him.

At midwinter, he rises over the village far, far to the right of my window. I have to lean out to bid him good morning (which I do), and from around now I find it reasonable to take a cup of tea or coffee (or sometimes both) out to the front garden to spend a few minutes in silent caffeinated mediation.

By the time midsummer arrives, he’s right in front of my window, rising up almost over the clump of mature Scots and Corsican Pines atop Wotton Hill, first planted to commemorate Trafalgar then replanted to celebrate Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. Then he sidles off to again, stage right.

We travel through the wheel of the year, and the Sun moves from right to left and back again, but it’s about now, on a cold frosty morning with whitened grass and visible breath, and the urge to share a coffee with the ‘verse, that the year starts again for me.