Spring thoughts

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

I really, really hate the thought of being one of those commentators who is always talking things down for the sake of a headline. Sometimes, however, I just get struck by the sheer awfulness of it all. Take today for example. I’m drowning in figures and P&L sheets for the merchants appearing in our Trailblazers supplement (if you haven’t sent me your company details yet, might I please exhort you to get a blooming move on?). It does not make for a comfortable read, something that is made worse by the fact that we are looking, for the most part, at the 2024 full-year accounts. I can’t even contemplate the 2025 ones yet. Too scary.

So I turned to the news, to the good old BBC website, to see if I could find anything more cheerful to write about. Big mistake. Huge. Sackings, XL bully dog attacks, MP suspensions, oil price rises…

I’m still not entirely sure I understand why things kicked off in the Middle East the way they did this time, but headlines such as “Housing market to soften amid Iran war fallout, Nationwide says”, “Trump tells the UK and other countries ‘go get your own oil’ from Strait of Hormuz”, and “Dow Jones slides as FTSE 100 extends losses amid Iran strikes”, have me wanting to stay at home and watch Jane Austen adaptations on repeat. We haven’t quite got to the stage where we’re rushing down to the one petrol station that is rumoured to have supplies, as happened in Autumn 2021, but there were several of those yellow ‘no petrol’ labels on a few of the pumps I drove past yesterday. Plus, with the school Easter holidays now upon us, I think there are some legitimate concerns about flight cancellations due to jet-fuel shortages. Being stuck in Lanzarote sounds lovely, until it means you’re missing work, the kids are missing school, and you’re kipping on an airport floor while your car racks up the parking charges at Gatwick.

I did, however, find something that made me happy over on LinkedIn, not a sentence I usually write. Someone from one of the Civils & Lintels branches, posted that they had been asked whether there was a prayer room. So they jigged a few things around, put up a sign, and then the answer was, yes. No bother, no fuss, just accommodating diversity when required. Nice.

It reminded me of an afternoon a couple of weeks ago. Across from my study is a hedge and a patch of grass. Not often used, other than as a highway for wildlife, and visitors parking their cars. One day I heard voices and there were three teenagers standing around there chatting. I initially thought maybe having a crafty smoke or plotting something nefarious. But shame on me, because two of them wandered off to wait further down the road, while the third got his prayer mat out, reminding me that it was Ramadan. When he’d finished, he rolled up the mat and went off with his pals who had been waiting patiently for him. It was quite lovely.

As was the drive home from work yesterday, a week after the Spring equinox, with the cherry trees lining the road in all their bridesmaid-pink voluptuousness. In the week approaching the Easter weekend, whether you celebrate it as a religious festival, or as a chance to get some R&R and downtime, may all this help to take our minds off the general awfulness of the rest of the world. For now.