Dark days ahead

Today was the first of the grey days for the season - or the first that I've seen, anyway. It really brought home that winter is just around the corner. And, even knowing that it will be my last northern hemisphere winter, I'm not sure how I'll handle it. Because the thought of darkness before 4 in the afternoon is perhaps one of the more miserable thoughts that today brought into my head.

Of course, there are benefits to winter. There is no other season so friendly to the chubby girl, as everyone else bundles up in layers of clothing that go some way to evening out the imbalances in stature. There are the boots, coats, scarves and hats, at least one item of which I never felt the necessity for wearing until I got over here. In fact, I remember a few years where I didn't even own a winter coat. I went an entire winter at school without even owning a jumper to wear with my uniform (you think Melbourne doesn't get cold? Try getting through a Melbourne winter wearing only the thinnest of see-through lemon yellow shirts, a white t-shirt, a school blazer and skirt. It was even worse because that was the year it was cool to wear knee-hi socks instead of the official baby-poo brown tights). I could never manage that here. It's hard enough to make it through summer without a jumper.

But whatever else living here has done for me, I now have a profound appreciation for Melbourne's weather. Often maligned by other Australians because of the supposed grey and rain, I never had as much of a problem with it as interstaters did. Like many Melburnians, I secretly enjoyed the changing of the seasons; perhaps it wasn't necessary to go through quite so many changes in a single day, but the definition of the seasons and the separate activities and wardrobes that went with them always had an appeal. Here in London, there is less definition. What there is can be found in the different light levels rather than in the weather. Yes, it gets colder in winter, but it's such a gradual drift from the "warmth" of summer that it's hard to tell where one season ends and another begins. It's only the shortening of the days that brings home just how late in the year it is.

Next week sees the end of daylight savings, bringing with it darkness before 6. It won't be long before I'm leaving work in the dark. On Fridays. When I finish at 4:30. How people survive in places with almost continual darkness around Christmas I can't even begin to fathom. I'm sure I'm still recovering from depression after spending a week in the semi-darkness of Finland last Christmas. So roll on winter, do you worst. Then surrender to the sun and bring on the summer. Please.