Overwintering

I often worry that a bad winter might finish me off. I’ve read too many Victorian novels about winter’s ‘icy hand’ closing around the throats of the very young or very old — and then they’re found days later, rot suspended by refridgeration, frowning stiffly into a bundle of rags.

As for me, I’m definitely one of society’s weaklings: there is, for example, a small cut on my left nostril that re-opens with a sting each November. And I complain about it for three months solid. That’s just a glimpse into how pathetic both I and my face can be.

You may be like me and feel, too, as if winter makes you smaller, sleepier, more susceptible. I find it almost impossible to get out of bed in the dark. It makes me wish I were a hedgehog — nobody asks them to take a shower before dawn every day, under unforgiving CFLs.

Luckily there are ways, even for us wannabe hedgehogs, of feeling that you might just make it to see another snowdrop. I have very recently learned to enjoy winter, and to think of it as something to love instead of to endure. At the risk of stating the obvious, it takes a hefty supply of jumpers, intriguingly spiced teas and fat novels set deep in candlelit history. Something else that helps is a pair of excellent pyjamas, and a good line in hearty vegetable stews (the secret is cumin and plenty of pepper).

You can’t live in Edinburgh and not like winter. Even though it scares me, and I do worry about being found frozen in a bundle of rags like an old lady in a novel, it thrills me too. Lots of bloggers like autumn, and I do too, but I’m a convert now. It’s all about Jack Frost.

 Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
- Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost

(mugs from Slightly Foxed and Anthropologie; fox brooch from Lea Stein)

Tagged as: cold, hibernation, winter