Winter is drawing in…
Not quite cold enough to see your breath, but cold enough to require a scarf and somewhere to put your hands. This is the British autumn - although perhaps ironically, given the name, this could also be our lot for the British summer. As soon as I figure out who to sue over global warming I’m onto it, you don’t promise sub-tropical temperatures if you can’t deliver on it.
It’s getting chilly out, which isn’t necessarily the way I like it, but it does mean I get to wear my coats and scarves, which I do like. You have to balance these things. What I find astonishing is the constancy of sweltering temperature on the tube lines whatever the rest of the world might be doing. Incidentally, have you ever thought about the air down there? It’s smells musty like it’s been there since they built the thing, how many people must that last gulp have gone through? Doesn’t bear thinking about, really. I remember hearing years ago that if you have a glass of water in London, it’s been through seven people before you. This mildly disgusting and I don’t know how true it is - there must come a point on the planet when every single droplet has been through someone, somewhere - now that’s community.
But yes, it’s getting chilly out. I work from nine until close, which means that shortly I won’t be seeing my house in daylight of a weekday until sometime in 2009. This is the sort of thought that fills me with dread. I don’t much like being cold, that feeling of emptiness in your extremities, a certain discomfort. I like cosiness, being cooled by a light breeze, the feel of the sun on your face. I wouldn’t mind if the country got a couple of degrees warmer, really - I’ve never really been to Norfolk, never had a chance to form a bond, I doubt I’d miss it when it was gone. (Now there’s a good line to hamper a career in politics. Writing it is, then.) This chilliness makes it hard to get dressed in the morning - not through reduced motor control, although that is occasionally an issue in my slightly drafty bedroom, but because I either dress warm for the little trip to the train and suffer thereon, or I get hypothermia before I’ve even made the next train from platform 1 for London Bridge.
Life’s tough, and winter is dog eat dog…(although has anyone ever seen a dog eat another dog? What a stupid expression.)