OK, it’s the weather
It may be wishful thinking — or some misplaced arrogance — but I think I notice the small, weird changes in the weather that creep up on us. Mostly, this is down to my age, of course, and the fact that I have memories of a time when weather patterns seemed to be content to fit more neatly inside their allotted seasons. In my Edinburgh childhood, for instance, winter meant snow and sledging on the steep slope from the second green on my local golf course. Every winter.
I have never taken my children sledging in this country. That’s not because I am a horrible, kill-joy father. Lack of snow had a lot to do with it.
On Sunday we had snow. Not for long and it lay around for only a few hours before getting bored and melting away for the most part. Some hardy iced clumps hung about for another day but it went from pristine layer of white to messy clumps of brown-stained ice in no time. The temperature for most of Monday and Tuesday was close to freezing.
Yesterday, still cold. Then it rained in the evening. I slept poorly and heard the rain whenever I woke during the night. My usual waking time of 5am arrived and I got up.
The first think I do most mornings when I get into my office is to slam on the electric heater while the central heating gears up to a decent temperature. This morning I came into the office and thought I must have left the heater on all night. But when I checked it, it was cold. The rain had stopped. I looked at my phone and the weather widget told me the temperature outside was 11 degrees. At 5am on a January morning.
Not normal. So not normal that I have thought about most of the day and finally got it out of my system by writing about it here.
This is another post that I won’t be sharing on Medium. Here’s a final image for you: I’m sitting writing this in bare feet. Again, in January. In a Victorian house that is not easy to heat, I might add. I have single-glazed windows in my office. But bare feet are OK this evening.