Well, welcome to winter everyone. I hate the long nights as much as the next person, but I do kind of like shutting the curtains at 4 o'clock and curling up on the sofa with the boys and a big blanket. There is a great Scottish verb to coorie doun, ('coorie' is pronounced to rhyme with...erm...well, it's a bit like how you'd say 'curry' if you come from Manchester. Sort of). It means to snuggle or nestle, which is just perfect for this time of year. Though to be honest, there's not a great deal of coorieing doun anywhere at the moment, what with birthday parties, Halloween discos, pumpkin carving and (yikes) school Christmas Fair to get ready for. Along with the day job.Mr Breakfast was in charge of the weekly shop this week, which meant that I had to go back to 5-acre Sainsburys to get the pumpkins, Mr B having returned declaring 'they don't sell pumpkins'. In the week before Halloween. Yuh-huh. A severe case of man-looking when you can't locate the world's biggest vegetable sitting in a vast box right by the door. Anyway, we are now ready for pumpkin carving action.
I am very much the optimist, despite living in a city that is located in apparent perma-drizzle. The clock change brings, briefly, lighter mornings again - a last gasp of light before proper winter darkness descends. So this morning we were treated to a fabulous cloud inversion over Glasgow when we opened the curtains. From our window (we live on a hill) we could see all the hills and church steeples and high rises poking out of a blanket of cloud, with a lovely pink and purple sky above. Just beautiful. Sadly, by the time I got outside it had all passed and so no photo opportunity. You'll just have to take my word for it.
It also took me a good 35 years to realise that in fact in the UK we don't have 6 months of GMT and 6 months of BST. GMT only lasts for 5 months. Who knew? And two of those are February and March, when the longer days suddenly start to unfurl really quickly. It's not nearly as bad as I thought. And once I got a garden and could watch snowdrops pushing up in December and new buds for next year already thinking about their plans on my blackcurrant bush, well, winter didn't seem so bad.
Though ask me in late January and you may hear a different story.
Is this inability of men to find things part of the 'Why men don't listen and women can't read maps'syndrome? It appears to be a universal thing. My half- Japanese sons can open the fridge and say there's no butter when it is right in the front staring at them, and my female Japanese students report identical problems with their men. Men are supposed to have a bigger 'orientation' part in their brains, right? However, when it comes to pumpkins in supermarkets in October, or location of pants in their underwear drawer, something appears to have gone amiss.
ReplyDeleteYou are very forgiving, blaming it on physiology. I have taken to replying to the 'I can't find the X. it's not there' with a very patronizing 'Have you looked *properly*, or was it a man-look?', whilst barely glancing up from the newspaper. I fear for my sanity otherwise, with three men or men-in-training in the household.
DeleteWell, my two sons have flown the nest, apart from the odd crashing at Mum's after a night out with their local school friends (hence last Sunday's breakfast,) and I have to admit that, not for want of trying, I hasten to add, they are actually not trained yet.
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