January is a month which some people find difficult after the build-up and climax of Christmas.  This feeling has been exacerbated this year by the third lockdown of the pandemic with its huge rise in hospitalised patients.   But I have always viewed January with pleasure and welcomed it as the start of new possibilities.  Apart from the daylight hours lengthening again, I find immense pleasure in the appearance of snowdrops.  These delicately-patterned little flowers, with their apparent fragility and bowed heads are a quiet, understated reminder that new life is waiting to burst forth again, even in a time of harsh frost and occasional snow.

I have always considered snowdrops to be my mother’s and my own special flower, probably because we both have January birthdays.  We are both keen gardeners, and we have always had a particular pleasure in telling each other when the “green noses” in our gardens have started to push their way through the cold earth.  This is followed by the flower heads bending back on themselves, then turning white as they prepare to open up their delicate heads and nod gently in the chill winds.  I recall the story that after I was born, my father took one of my older sisters with him to buy some flowers for my mother.  When my sister explained that the flowers were for our mother who had just given birth to a baby sister, the shop owner handed her a free bunch of snowdrops to take to my mother because she thought my sister was so charming and thoughtful.

One of the few good things which this lockdown has brought us is the extended time of having all our daughters working from home. With four of us using computers simultaneously and holding multiple Zoom meetings at all times of the day, our internet has struggled to keep up with the demand.  However, once the weekend arrives, I’m generally the only person attending Zoom meetings, so there are fewer frozen screens, and no need to tiptoe into a room in case someone is in an on-line meeting.  We also have time to spend together in some free-time activities, and last weekend it was particularly enjoyable to have a ceilidh practice, when we played our way through a selection of our Scottish dance music.  I am ever the optimist, and I am quietly hoping that later in the year we will be able to host a ceilidh - if vaccinations proceed according to plan.

Inspired by my daughters practising away on their various instruments, I also decided that some other music practice on my part was long overdue!  So I am pleased to report that I opened up my oboe case, and gingerly applied cork grease around the joints of the instrument.  I put the reed to soak in water while I found some music from my folders, and I hoped that the keys wouldn’t have seized up in the months since I had last played.  With no orchestras, no music groups, and no services in which to play my oboe, my musical life had gone by the board in recent times. Wind instruments are particularly forbidden in the current crisis! I happily spent the next hour playing my way through a selection of favourite pieces, and although the breath control wasn’t what it would normally be, I found great pleasure in a little bit of ‘normal’ pre-lockdown activity.  This reminds me that there will be joy to be found after the pandemic, once everyone is able to return to leisure activities, and maybe we might even discover some new ones!

Sarah Bourne, Chaplain for the Arts – 20^th January 2021    sarahbourne@banburystmary.org.uk