The spring asleep in The View from the Terrace

After a few spring like days it has turned bitterly cold again and we are promised snow and winds from Siberia in the next few days. When I looked through the window this morning the lawn was covered with frost but the sky was clear and the day filled with sunshine. It’s our wedding anniversary on Wednesday and I had hoped we might go for a snowdrop walk at a place nearby where they also do lunches but maybe not. On Saturday I saw daffodils out in Hereford and now we are back to winter. It reminds me of a line from Oscar Wild’s The selfish Giant. After the giant has learned to stop being so selfish and share things with others he looks out to his garden on a snowy day and thinks ‘He did not hate the winter now for he knew that it was merely the spring asleep.’ I love that. It seems the spring woke last week but has now decided to have a little longer rest.

The Selfish Giant is one of my favourite short stories. I first heard it in my first year at senior school when I was 11. We read it in class and for homework had to write the story in our own words. English was my best subject and I did well. When the teacher gave out our essays she said we had all done good work but just one girl got an ‘A’. Then, to my horror, she looked at me and asked me to come out and read my essay to the class. She thought she was praising me but I always hated being the centre of attention. Afterwards, in the playground, the other girls mocked me, ‘Only one girl got an ‘A’ they teased’. I made sure I never got an ‘A’ again, which was the opposite of what the teacher had intended. It didn’t put me off the story though and I bought it for our children and read it to them. In fact I often bought it for other people’s children too when mine were asked to a party and needed a present to take. So that teacher’s legacy lives on even though her actions didn’t go down well at the time.