Oh. Winter!
“Knock. Knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Winter…”
“Oh. Winter!”
What I really want to do right now is slam the door in Winter’s face. Barricade myself in and not come out of my house till the daffodils show me it’s safe. If I were an animal, the clocks going back would signal it’s time to stop stuffing my face with my favourite foods, snuggle up and sleep till the spring. But, nope. Hibernation is not for humans. For me, the clocks going back signal the imminent arrival of the Seasonal Death Eater. Winter. The season that sucks the life from my very soul. I’ll say it again. Oh. Winter!
Winter. The Magpie. It’s cold, brittle fingers steal the warmth from my bones and the spring from my step. They steal the evening daylight and the leaves from the trees. Well, technically it gets Autumn to do its dirty work. But the only thing I dislike about Autumn is that it precedes Winter- so I’ll leave Autumn to bask in its kaleidoscopic beauty before Winter steals that too. Take. Take. Take. But apparently Winter has feelings to you know. Feeling a flicker of guilt about the icy trinkets and frozen treasure that line the pockets of its heavy, black cloak, it decides to give me something back. It drapes my shoulders with its coat and leaves me to drag it around with me till the first signs of Spring. Oh. Winter!
Winter. It’s not like I don’t know it’s coming. Winter sits on Autumn’s shoulders, taunting me through the last rays of sunlight and the greying sky. The odd morning frost here. The odd shower there. ‘I’m coming for you,’ it calls on the wind. ‘You can‘t run. You can’t hide’ It whispers as the nights close in. It’s clever is Winter. A slow burner. Sneaking, Creeping. Till I find myself in its grasp. Sure enough, every year it comes and every year I endure it. When it’s over I say I can’t go through that again. But every year I do and every year it feels like I’m trudging through treacle. The hopeful arms of Spring are a speck on the horizon; moving further and further away year on year. Oh. Winter!
But not this year.
For the first time in over 20 years of suffering in Winter’s grasp, I’m fighting back.
Or should I say, writing back…
So. Winter!
I’m going to use your long, dark long nights as an excuse to snuggle down and go to bed early. And if I go to bed early, I can get up early… and write! WRITE, WRITE, WRITE, my way, right, through Winter- under the watchful glare of a Light Lamp for good measure.
