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Only Polar Bears are Unhappy (Read 243 times)
The Heartless Felon
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Only Polar Bears are Unhappy
Feb 20th, 2020 at 10:52am
 
From The Times, February 20, 1920
As yet the present year of grace cannot be said to have fulfilled all that was hoped of it. But if the peace upon which it is engaged in setting its seal does not exactly match our hearts’ desire, it has at least given us one good thing for which we cannot be too thankful. Probably the oldest among us can hardly remember so early in the year such a wonderful foretaste of spring. While New York has been scourged by blizzards, London has been basking in golden sunshine and under blue skies that would intoxicate even Monte Carlo. Early in the morning the sleeper is awakened by the birds singing in the branches as only English songbirds can. In St James’s Park waterfowl of strange plumage strut about with an air of astonishment which could hardly be greater if the huts by the bridge were swept away and the lake restored to the level of the happy days before the war. Only the Polar bears in Regent’s Park are unhappy. Only the farmers and gardeners are gladdened by today’s news that snow has fallen in the north. They know that Nature is a great respecter of the law of averages and fear that sooner or later the frostbitten buds of their fruit-trees will have to pay heavily for the sunshine of today.
The charm of our English climate is that nothing is more probable than the unexpected. In the three years before the war the temperature from February to May was well above the average, and yet in February and March of 1913 the snowstorms and gales and floods and thunderstorms were about the worst on record, not only in England, but all over the world. In 1916 we had the warmest January and the wettest March and in 1917 the coldest April and the warmest May for sixty years. Last year February, March and April were exceptionally cold. In February, 1916, there were snowdrifts 11ft deep on Dartmoor. This year we have, or had yesterday, a temperature so high that in the country boys were bathing in the open, and in London people in the streets and parks all looked intoxicated with the warmth and the feeling of spring in their veins. Tomorrow, though at present it looks as if the weather cannot break, it may be the better part of wisdom to get ready our fur coats. Only, let us be thankful while we may, even though the promise of spring prove to be a will-o’-the-wisp.
thetimes.co.uk/archive
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