The Dullest Blog: The Magners Glasgow Comedy Festival edition

I’ve never been one to be thrilled about the onset of Spring. I’ve always felt that it undermined the validity of my misanthropic perspective on life.  Say what you like about winter, you fucking know where you are with it; cold, dark, uncomfortable – you might not like it but it doesn’t lie to you. Not like that bastard Spring, with all its cheery colours and breezy brightness and gusts of warm optimism. Winter gives it to you straight – 'Go back to bed, turn the lights off, don’t go out, get underneath the duvet – it’s horrible outside, the world is every bit as horrid and beastly as you think it is...' then spring comes along and prances gaily outside your window singing upbeat show tunes about how 'Everything’s not that bad' and how 'Summer is just round the corner' and you just so want to believe it....

Cut to mid July – the temperature hasn’t risen above 12 degrees, it hasn’t stopped raining in three weeks, you have had to turn the central heating back on and all your neighbours think you’re special because you insist on wearing the shorts you spent good money on. 

I went for a walk last Sunday, fully aware that I was being seduced once again by Spring’s malicious bullshit. I walked alongside an overeager river, the liquid sun squinting through the trees at me. I passed by some people who stopped and smiled (which I found unusual if a little annoying), then I stopped in a village and went in to a charity shop. I was flicking randomly through a book and impulsively stopped on a page and there in bold italics was this sentence ...

Spring has returned.  The Earth is like a child that knows poems.  ~Rainer Maria Rilke

It wasn’t that I meant to, but I was suddenly quite annoyed and perturbed to find myself almost smiling. Spring may be a bullshitter, but you’ve got to hand it to her... she’s fucking good at it....