Australia, New Zealand and South Africa describe the approaching festive season as “the silly season”, in contrast to how we use that phrase to refer to the summer recess when our hard-working public servants take their holidays. Though some say the silly season happens when they are at work and busy making a hames of things.
Whatever about the wind in the willows, there’s no shortage of warblers in the willows that I planted on the riverbank of this country town cottage some years ago.
These dark October days, with conflicts worldwide and many of us weighed down by worries in our private lives, can make it hard to believe that light will prevail again.
Recently I returned from my first holiday since before Covid came calling to this country town cottage. By which I mean foreign holiday, for I had no less than three, albeit brief, homegrown breaks this year, all of which succeeded in giving me that sense of freedom you get from packing up and parting ways with far-too-familiar surroundings, walking out the door without a glance. Sort of like getting a separation, if not a divorce, from your daily life.
Things can get lost in translation, as early Christian missionaries in Korea discovered when they used the analogy of the good shepherd to explain their creed, only to find locals confused, as sheep were pretty thin on the ground in this eastern Asian country.