President's February Address

Happy February everyone.

According to our ancestors of long ago this is the  last month of winter and they named  it, in old English, “Salmonath’ - mud month.

The Romans held a month long festival called Februalis when people engaged in  Februa, ritual washing, cleansing and atonement as it was believed that it helped improve fertility and creativity. They named a god, Februus , to honour these celebrations and from that the month became known as February.

This cleaning festival is believed to be where we get our tradition of ‘spring cleaning ‘.

It was the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius , 700 BC who added January and February to the original 10 month calendar.

The Chinese New Year began early this month and for 2022 it is the year of the Water Tiger.

Encouragingly it is suggested that this is an auspicious year delivering fortitude and restoration. Let’s hope this will be the case .

We all now know very well how to harness our ‘Februs ‘ by our habitual hand sanitising  and general anti bac cleaning and perhaps now we can unleash our inner tiger to re-energise our strength in order to adapt and cope with what is to come and use this renewed energy to give us  a ‘spring in our step’  to begin to enjoy the season of the same name that is just around the corner.