How can winter be over if it barely ever began?

For the last four months, I’ve been feeling like the fella in the Western who’s peering nervously over a vast expanse of empty prairie towards the lonely distant mountains, turning to glare at you with nervous menace and whisper: “It’s quiet. Too quiet.”

Now that we’re nearer Paddy’s Day than St Bridget's, it’s fair to say that Winter is over, but did it ever begin? It seems a little strange to this northwest London Jewish blow-in to be talking weather in terms of saints’ days, yet all religion relies on a calendar to map our seasons.

All around me, the yellows are emerging, and while it’s thrilling to see celandine, primrose, daffodil, and forsythia announcing the end of the dark season by bursting forth their butter sunshine glory, I’m still twitching around, glancing fearfully over my shoulder like a Vietnam vet, waiting for Winter to hit.

Technically, we’re in Winter until the equinox, but in our irrational and wonderful human way, we feel we are now in Spring. While we know only too well that big weather can hit our Atlantic coast at any time, if a conveyor belt of storms roars in off the ocean now, they won’t be Winter ones.

Many might think me mad, but I’m unsettled by this lack of Winter. The sun and moon behaved themselves, so we knew where we were in the year, but the weather did nothing.

Hallelujah, you might cry. Your livestock are not stuck isolated on a tiny lump of elevated ground on a floodplain. You’ve not had pipes built into concrete burst from double digit freezing temperatures.

Storm Doris packed a short sharp punch last week, but apart from that we’ve had a couple of gales, a few frosty mornings, and generally calm and benign weather this Winter.

So why would I wish it otherwise?

My excellent friend, the Guru, used to take himself off to India every Autumn, returning to Ireland in springtime, but after a few years of this lifestyle, he found himself feeling exhausted. Might it be, I suggested to him, that your body and soul need a Winter? Maybe you need to slow down in three months of darkness, sleep a lot and sit by the fire?

Despite the views of the American Vice-President, we were not plonked onto a readily-prepared perfectly functioning planet. We have evolved with it, our needs linked to the seasons.

So, while I know that Winter has come and gone, I don’t feel that it has, and that unsettles me in a surprisingly profound way.

Read  Charlie’s column in full in this week’s Galway City Tribune.