Surely one of the great and underappreciated pleasures in life is anticipation. That glorious expectation of something good about to happen. It is how I feel towards the end of April every year.
Just ahead lie my two favourite months, May and June, when this country can be at its freshest and most spectacular, temperatures rise, the hawthorn comes into full, sweet bloom, and the evenings continue to lengthen.
Sometimes I think I prefer these end-of-April days, looking forward to all of that, than actually experiencing May and June. Because, when living through those two months, there is an accompanying sadness in knowing that they are also slipping away.
It is when I can sympathise with that line from Patrick Pearse’s The Wayfarer, that “the beauty of the world hath made me sad, this beauty that will pass.”
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It is why, as a child, my favourite day of the year over time became Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day. There was the excitement of all that fuss, preparation and expectation rather than having it all laid before you, as on Christmas Day, only to realise as the afternoon wore on that it would be an eternity of 364 days before you could experience any of it again.
It is why, generally, I prefer and enjoy the journey rather than the destination itself. The adventure is in getting there, wherever or whatever that might be. Like life itself, the living of which is always better than its end.
You might remember that Guinness advertisement from the 1990s where actor Joe McKinney dances around impatiently to the quirky tune Guaglione as he waits for his pint to settle, culminating in the blissful moment when he brings that perfect creation to his lips, leaving us to imagine the joy of the rest.
It set off a dance craze, the tune knocked Riverdance off the number one spot in Ireland and reached number two in the UK, Guinness sales soared, Joe McKinney had to go to the US as, so typecast had he become as “the Dancing Man”, he could not get any other acting work in Ireland, and the ad itself (created in Dublin by the Arks agency) won a succession of awards.
It was titled “Anticipation”.
Anticipation, from Latin anticipationem, for “foreshadowing”, “looking forward to”.
