However, those forty days should have finished round about the middle of March, and winter is still here. Unfortunately there is another weather proverb, this time for the day of the Chair of St Peter (or Washington's birthday in the US), on 22nd February, which says that the presence of ice on this day foretells another forty days of winter (and ice), which takes us well into April. As this latter proverb is of German origin I had hoped it wouldn't apply to us, but the continuing frosts, chill winds, and the layer of ice that still covers our garden pond, would seem to say otherwise.
However, picnics in bad weather is something of a British tradition, so yesterday, for an Easter treat, my father and I set off with a flask of home-made butternut squash soup, some home-made gluten-free 'Kentish Huffkins' (filled with buttery-egg, and manchego cheese), and the dog, to a nearby village with a very picturesque village green. Sitting in the car in the full sunshine, it was really quite warm behind glass. Outside however, as we took a brief walk around the green, the perishing cold wind pursued us at every turn, whipping our faces as we walked down one side and freezing the backs of our necks as we walked up the other. Despite the sunshine, it was not what you might call encouraging sort of weather, and we did not linger. We soon discovered we were not the only ones to feel this way, for when we got as far as the cricket pavilion we saw a notice attached to the railings, flapping in the breeze. It said:
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