Humble February is a time to plant little seeds of hope

Country Living with Francis Farragher

Like most of the world’s population, I’ve been scratching around for any morsel of consolation that can be found to sustain us through one tranche of bad news to the next.

Now I’ve nothing against RTE’s coverage of the Covid situation, but I just feel at times that one or two of the contributors could maybe up ease up a little on hammering us with one bad news bite after the next.

There’s news, bad news, and what I’d call ‘dramatic bad news’ – maybe just a sliver of hope here and there, amidst all the layers of despair, might just keep us going.

Our national broadcaster also seems to assume that everyone can work from home and that almost all working people just go to offices – workplaces though I’m afraid aren’t as simple as that.

Then I think of the thousands of people who work every day in huge manufacturing plants like Boston Scientific or Medtronic in Galway city, which are real pillars of both the local and national economy. These are people producing high value medical products – and no, they just can’t work from home.

Already, I find myself drifting off into negative tributaries just as I was trying to eke out some silver linings to give us all a straw to cling to.

But, all along it’s there in front of my eyes, one of my favourite dates of the year – next Monday – the first day of unloved February, when we were led to believe at school, many moons ago, that Spring began.

True, our second month in 2020, didn’t give us much cause for optimism as a series of Atlantic storms blew in over us and deluged the countryside with rain, but I’m given to forgive February 2020 for that slip-up, given her many previous good deeds.

While our meteorological friends will point to March 1 as being the first day of Spring – on the basis that December, January and February are the coldest months of the year in the Northern Hemisphere – our Celtic roots will tend to side with February in this debate.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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