Days of February Summer

It is a curious phenomena that only seems to occur every few years. It usually follows after a relatively harsh winter, this concept of a 'February summer', and is due, mostly, to that feeling of relief after the claustrophobic days of January.
January is an odd month, always beginning optimistically, albeit in a harsh way, but by the time the last half of January appears, that optimism has been transfigured into a sense of slushy claustrophobia; grey nights, where the air is so thick with cold it seems impossible to breathe, where there seems no colour apart from black, white and the orange of streetlight, where (for some reason) my eyesight seems to deteriorate to such an extent that it is difficult to read by lamp light.
A February Summer is that sudden plunge into sunlight that makes being outside pleasant once again. There is no warning that this will occur. Heavy rain was forecast yesterday, but when I woke up, and peered at the street outside, there it was, bright sunlight.
It couldn't be classed as a February Summer until I got outside, and felt how warm it was, but no, it was quite warm. Pleasant even. I had missions to complete yesterday, which had causing me no small amount of anxiety all week. I had to finish a t-shirt design for a band (less than 48 hours to design and finish the thing before the band's singer had to hand it in to the printers), and I to visit the dread environs of the council tax office.
Between these less than pleasant excursions, and the more pleasant rendesvous of meeting Yovee, over from Poland for the weekend, for coffee, I made it down to the beach. I bought myself a cup of tea from one of the numerous seafront stalls, and settled onto the pebbles. The last time I had been able to do this was the last week of October, those days just before the final incidents at my old nightmare flat which necessitated me having to move out the following week.
Oh, the relief. Not just of the warmth, and of being able to be outside again (I hate being inside. I am like a gentleman of the road who has a building to sleep in at night) but the pleasure of being able to read once more. The act of reading, for me, is always bound up in circumstance. A book is vastly improved be being able to read it in a cafe, on a train journey, or more so, at a park, or at a beach. This perhaps explains why I am still reading Robert Bolano's 2666, after a month and a half. Reading indoors, particularly those ever-gloomy places I seem to always be living in, just depresses me. I cannot concentrate, and over the winter, I seem not to be able to physically read. Eye-strain. Premonitions of growing old.
There was the crashing of the waves to enjoy, all spindrift madness, some predator clawing the stones back into it's maw. A hippy, off to my left, played a guitar I couldn't hear. To my right, a foreign woman, I think she was Polish, lay on the stones, in the langorous attitude of a cat.
I had sat too close to the sea though, and the tide was coming in. There was a great leap toward me of white foam, nearly reaching me. Somewhat perturbed by this, I retreated back, and sat amongst dried seaweed in the sudden sun of a February Summer.

It seems, or perhaps I am being overtly optimistic, that there is another day of February Summer outside. I must make the most of them, for they never last for long, and the bleakness of late winter soon reasserts itself.
No matter, it is nice anyway to have even only a few days relief, if only to remind us that winter, like periods of melancholy, don't last forever.

I don't think the February Summer can explain quite so much why I enjoyed Megadeth's 'So Far, So Good... So What' album though. I downloaded it last year but hadn't listened to it for over twenty years.
Ah well.
Probably back to winter tomorrow.