Wherever I go, there I am.

Confucious

Apparently the name ‘January’ and all its Latin connotations of the proverbial two-headed god, looking both forward and back, replaced the Old English name for a time of year known as ‘Later Yule’.

Of course Janus is an image we can all understand. In the cheese-poisoned no-man’s-land that is the six days between Boxing Day and New Year’s it is hard not to do at least a little navel-gazing. Pondering on what has gone before and wondering what might be to come. These thoughts, along with a healthy dose of hubris of course, imagining that we will do so much better next time, are only natural. But it’s all so very tiring. And on a full stomach too.

I find the idea of ‘Later Yule’ to be much more forgiving. It’s not Yule. Yule has well and truly been and gone. The bank account is echoing and the fridge is full of foods that cannot be usefully combined into a meal. The feasting is over and we are left with the crumbs. The 40-yard dash of the week before has been replaced by a bleary sense of being disconnected from time and space altogether.

So definitely not Yule. But not anything else in particular either. Not just yet. It’s simply a bit later than it was before. In this interpretation the first of January is neither a clean slate nor an opportunity to be absolutely marvellous in a way in which you never quite managed to be last year. You might, of course, still get to being marvellous. But not just yet. ‘Later’ is not a time for beginning anything dramatic. Later is a time for pondering, meandering. It’s a time for pottering around and getting caught up on all the bits and bobs you didn’t get done earlier.

There is no dramatic end to Later Yule. No matter what the clocks and the fireworks and Jules Holland and his collection of ageing rockers and Marimba/Skiffle Fusion bands might try to tell us.

Rather, at the very end of January, perhaps even the early stages of February I might be out surveying the ramparts at Magpie Hill, or more accurately, be taking something out to the bin. I will scuttle out of the back door as usual, but halfway towards my goal I will suddenly notice that it is not quite as dark as it was before. I will wonder when this happened. The light will seem to have snuck up on me.

On closer inspection I will see small but quite determined green shoots appearing where bulbs were planted along the sides of the path, way back in the distant autumn. And when pausing to consider the situation further, I will discern that the birds seem to be singing particularly loudly for early evening and that the air has taken on a particularly fresh and future-ish kind of smell. I will take a deep breath of that air, and filled with light and birdsong, it will taste like a draught of cold clear water.

And then I will know. Spring is on its way.

The time for a clean slate has come at last.