I’m a summer person.
Summer officially ends on Monday and, with it, the wearing of white and that feeling of being on vacation all the time. So, too, the ascendence of summer people over winter people. The calendar year runs January to January, but for many, that sinking, new-school-year feeling that comes around the first of September is the real start of the new year. How depressed the new season makes you – well, that depends largely on which season you think of as “yours”.
Summer. Every time. For a few short weeks that pass all too quickly, I can be warm – properly warm – and feel the sun on my face and not have to wrap up in layers of clothing. Y’know, the weather suiting my clothes and all that. Yet, brief though the summer season is – realistically, June, July and the first couple of weeks in August – the whiners still moan about it being too hot. No, it isn’t. It is never too hot in this soggy, rain-soaked temperate island. It gets reasonably warm for a few weeks each year if we are lucky and we were this year, so let those of us who are summer folk enjoy that brief respite from the rain, wind, ice and bitter cold while we can instead of wishing the weather would break or complaining that it is too hot.
Today is the first of September. Today I mourn the passing of summer as I always do. Today, I long for the warm days and balmy evenings that are ten months away. Today, I mentally prepare for the long nights and cold dark mornings to come – of leaving the house in the dark and returning after sundown.
So, yeah, today I’m feeling a little depressed.
That’s really bad. Personally I can cope with September, October is bad, but it’s after the clocks change and into November it gets really awful.
Weirdo!
When it gets cold, I can always put more / heavier clothes on. There are only so many clothes you can take off when it gets hot.
(Still, serves me right for moving to Italy.)
Surely lefty revisionism as this is the first time I’ve ever heard of meteorlogical seasons. Wouldn’t be the same geezers wot can’t sort out them there weather forecasts. ffs
I’m one of that rare breed – a winter person. Don’t get me wrong, I do love the summer, too, but I think that my love of winter is due to being basically a nocturnal person living in a diurnal people’s world (I should have become a security guard when I left school – but too late now!), so that any lengthening in darkness hours is a bonus for me. When the clocks go back it’s like coming back to life again.
In the winter we have those lovely dark evenings where you look at the clock and are pleasantly surprised to realise that you have a whole evening ahead of you, and it isn’t time to start thinking about bedtime after all; in the winter you know that the weather’s going to be cold, so you know exactly how to dress if you’re going out – none of all that “should I take a jumper/coat/umbrella” malarkey; in the winter the weather’s often so ghastly that you don’t feel guilty staying in and doing “stuff” at home, whereas in the summer all those jolly-hockey-sticks types are constantly giving you the guilt trip about not coming out and “enjoying the nice weather;” best of all, in the winter one can have a really good lie-in at the weekends without that dreadful feeling that one should be springing out of bed, eager and enthusiastic to get the gardening done/go to the beach/go for a walk in the countryside. And nothing beats the feeling of complete and utter cosiness of curling up beside an open fire on a rainy/cold Sunday afternoon in front of an old film on the TV – in summer that would just feel downright odd! The only downside to the winter is Christmas. But that’s only a couple of days, so it’s a tolerable interruption to the “cosy indoor” season.
But I do realise that I’m a rarity.
No, I don’t get any of that and other people don’t have any effect on me. If I want to stay in or lie in, I do. If I want to go out, I do. Summer is the one time of the year my body is comfortable. And, of course, summer is made for motorcycling.
Christmas? I hate it. Loathe it with a vengeance. Jolliness is imposed that is as fake and facile as tinsel. Gah!
Same as that. Can’t abide cold weather.
A year-round temperature of 30 – 35c is perfect for me. Even here in Southern Europe it still gets too cold in the winter for my liking, so the next move will be to SE Asia and a bit closer to the equator. Unlike Jax, I’m a day person, although as I only sleep 5 or 6 hours a night, I’m a bit of a night-owl too. I love to get up early, and I never lie in. I love life, and can’t wait to get started every day. That I’m self-employed and love my work helps a lot, though!
I couldn’t agree more about Christmas. All that false bonhomie and “Merry Christmas”-ing drives me nuts. And I’m really not a “Bah, humbug” sort of person; I just find the whole charade that surrounds Christmas so contrived, and I feel utterly hypocritical participating. This coming Christmas I will be sipping a beer (or the juice from a freshly picked coconut if it’s early in the day) on a suitably tropical Thai beach, and hopefully won’t be exposed to so much as one bar of the awful refrain of ‘Jingle Bells’, or that dreadful song by Slade or whoever it was who recorded it. Christmas will come and go as if it never existed. Bliss.
And also the coming of the house spider invasion, just to depress you more.
Current score in my house: spiders (1), cats 2
It’s not winter quite yet LR, make the most of the fine weather while it lasts. I always thought that Autumn started around the Equinox, 23rd of September this year. The winter feeling doesn’t start for me until the clocks go back in late October. I’ll carry on cycling to work until it starts to get properly dark at both ends and the forecasts start saying that I’m going to get rained on. Then I’ll use the car until next March.
I intend to make the most of any good weather we get. It’s just that I always get the back to school blues every September. Yeah, I know, I left school decades ago, but the scars still linger.
I’m reaching the grand old age of 65 in January next, and will cut down to part-time work. Can’t wait for that, so this winter will be one of the happiest times of my life.
But, in contrast to many of the others, I dislike temperatures in excess of 70 degrees on the proper scale – (that’s around 20-21 degrees C for you youngsters brought up on this Napoleonic nonsense) and I just become sleepy and lethargic. Doubtless there are those who would claim they couldn’t tell the difference in me, but also I have always been a keen photographer and light (and colour) has a more magical if ephemeral quality in autumn, winter & spring, and the magic hours – 30 mins either side of sunset & sunrise – occur at more reasonable times.
However, I try to refrain from moaning to those who love the heat, and whose idea of bliss is to lie down and bake their brains whilst risking skin cancer.
À chacun son goût – or one man’s fish is another man’s poisson, as our froggy friends would say.
Well, if you are going to talk photography, autumn and winter give us the most evocative light. It’s just a shame it’s so damned cold…
Yes, I sympathise with you (and others) who are hothouse flowers: I love autumn & winter light, and not being too bothered by dry cold is really a fortunate bonus.
Miserable damp cold is, however, a different matter. Whether or not modern medicine recognises it, damp cold weather aggravates my arthritis which I’ve had since my mid-teens, and November onwards can be a bit of a bugger in that respect. Still, 400 milligrams of generic Ibuprofen definitely helps, and there are many poor sods far worse off than I.
“I intend to make the most of any good weather we get. It’s just that I always get the back to school blues every September. Yeah, I know, I left school decades ago, but the scars still linger.”
My apologies for taking so long to comment upon this particular thought, my busy life has been intruding, but I found it quite interesting. Apart from compulsory field sports which I hated, I don’t recall that I hated school so much that returning in September was such a big deal. I have a fairly pragmatic approach to the slings and arrows of life which means that I regarded the shit parts of school life as inevitable and I regard the cold and darkness of winter in the same way. Anyway, if we do get a shit load of snow we can take pleasure in watching the global warming alarmists squirm and in taking the piss out of David Viner yet again.
The odd thing is that the same childhood imprinting that causes you to hate September seems to be the same thing that makes it impossible for me to hate Christmas. As a kid, Christmas was always such a magical time, it was the only time that us kids ever got any new stuff. I found it interesting that my daughter never got the excitement that we felt on Christmas Eve, despite the fact that she got presents that we could never have even dreamed of. She had plenty of pocket money and got new stuff all year round and so Christmas was not such a big deal for her. I can’t even bring myself to hate the music which, let’s face it, was surely made to be loathed by all thinking people.
General Winter is just coming – and he has defeated many western armies as the Russians know. Except this time – in addition – EU in general will shiver at the best. No heat you see.