The Advent of Winter

It's a month today till Christmas! Does that make anyone else just feel, you know, tired? I love having a big family gathering, and sitting round the telly (having been watching X-Factor, Strictly, The Apprentice and now I'm a Celebrity on the sofa on my own, I'm desperate for a sense of community that's not reliant on texting my friends going, 'WTF - HOW is Katie Weasel still on this show?' and 'Gillian McKeith is the most annoying person I've ever seen on TV. And I've watched all the bad TV there is to watch'.)

But the inevitable magazine articles on day-to-night dressing ('add some sparkle and a pair of killer heels - plus a swish of black eyeliner and you're ready to wow!' is the extent of their expertise every bloody year), the high-street battles as you trawl the streets for gifts, and the endless 'should I buy my colleague a present? Will they buy me one? How much should I spend?' dilemma gives me a sense of exhausting deja vu. Not to mention the fact that in my job, we start planning Christmas in about March, which means that by the time it rolls around, I tend to be surprised that it's not happened six months ago, and already thinking about Spring 2011. Not as bad as a friend who used to buy Christmas stuff for TK Maxx, and had to buy all next year's Christmas decorations for the chain in January, but close.

Perhaps I'm feeling particularly Grinchy this year because Christmas heralds the arrival of Winter Proper. Now, last year's winter in London was bad enough. But winter in Scotland? 2010's was apparently epic. This year there's snow earlier than there's ever been snow in the country since records began (or something; no snow here today, though, just rather nice blue skies and nippy temperatures). So I am dreading at least three months of bone-shatteringly cold, wet, windy weather with added snow/ice+cobbles+hills = lethal, ankle-breaking conditions. I suppose on the plus side I'll be spending quite a lot of time on well-heated trains zapping up and down between here and London for meetings and hopefully some red-wine-in-the-pub sessions with mates. But I'm tempted to just pre-emptively christen it The Winter of Our Discontent and flag the fact that I'll probably be SAD, bad and dangerous to know come about March.