I was travelling back from York on the train yesterday to London. It was a beautiful spring day. Green, blue and sparkling. It got me thinking about spring a lot and also about green. The classic semiotic interpretation of green is that it is about nature and growth; the use of the word 'green' for anything that has any supposed environmental credentials is a case in point. But yesterday started me thinking whether we had forgotten why green was such an important colour. We have become disassociated from our environment and forgotten that green in spring was the sign to our ancestors that the bitter tribulations of winter were over. It signals hope and rebirth to us now because it literally meant rebirth to generations of people who lived off the land. Add to that the beauty of the spring sun. There is a certain crispness, thinness to the air which I find intoxicating. You can smell the newness, the delicate nature of the buds in the delicate whiffs of earth and bark that come to you on the breeze.
It was as you can see a beautiful journey yesterday and turned me all poetic.
Coupled with the fact that since Saturday I have my first nephew, Milo, a lovely beautiful little boy. So maybe that started me thinking about new beginnings.
