Dean’s Blog ‘If I were a crocus…’

Dean’s Blog ‘If I were a crocus…’

If I were a crocus I would give up too. Snow, sun, wind, frost, fog, on-the-terrace sunshine, rain, snow, sunburn etc etc. And that is before lunchtime. So the swathes of Cerulean blue and Cadmium yellow croci, or crocuses for non classical scholars, that edged the lawn, finally capitulated. Under this onslaught of the elements they have packed up and retired into their bulbs deep in the earth until next year. So? The point of a long, hard and unexpectedly winterish winter is to move on, into spring, and get practising and into the mood for summer. A few April showers are ok – Chaucer approved of them, too. ‘When that April and its showers sweet The drought of March hath pierced to the root’ he wrote with his English obsession with the weather. Interestingly enough, T.S.Eliot having soaked up the English climatic culture after 25 years in the US and anxious to fit into the local culture of his adopted home, also ranted on about ‘April is the cruellest month’.

Tropical shortie pyjamas
But enough is enough. You can overdo capricious and warmth makes the kids get ants-in-their-pants edgy. So that at the first spark of sun in the morning they decide to reduce to a sartorial minimum that can look like a set of tropical shortie pyjamas and then in the ‘Bise’-driven snow with wind-chill of minus 7 at break time, get boiling hot dashing about on the Red Top playing Killer Ball or soccer or something. After this they return panting to the classroom where it is 21 degrees centigrade min. Period 3 my G9 English class sounds like the understaffed casualty ward in Grey’s Anatomy, with full sensory sneezes, professional and comprehensive coughs, wide ranging throat clearing and methodical nostril renovation exercises taking the edge off the pathos of Juliet’s final goodbye to Romeo as he descends from her balcony. Iambic pentameters don’t have a chance. Romeo, I might add, is meanwhile dressed in warm woolly tights, a linen shirt and a sensibly baggy and lined, heavy weight velvet blouson jacket. And he could always unlace the removable sleeves when the sun came out. Dead practical and not a designer label in sight.

Withering teenage looks
So I’m outside on duty at lunchtime dressed in enough warm woollies that if I stand still I resemble an Oxfam jumble sale collection point and a kid in a skinny T shirt skids by as a colleague asks me if we are allowed to send him in to get more clothes on. And I think what a sensible duty companion I have. We don’t because I am too cold to be in the mood for one more of those withering teenage looks that says, ‘Duh! Like, you what?’

Meteorological myth
Later on in the week you can bet that many of these same kids have felt mildly unwell in class and even missed school for a day or even two with a bad cold or hacking cough or a painfully sore throat. And when that happens and I am feeling just fine, I register no Schadenfreude of course, but I do feel a little more morally justified in teasing the scantily dressed for being a zombie to convention and fashion and the meteorological myth that the sun is durable and hot.vv