The temperature dipped here the last couple of days to minus numbers.
I would note here that I talk and think in degrees Celsius – and kilograms and grams, and litres (unless it’s milk or beer, of course) and metres, but also miles. Yeah, we’re a confusing nation for sure.
Having just gallanted off to the French Riviera (that sounds ridiculously indulgent and posh to me, by the way) for a week where it was around 20 degrees most of the time probably made it seem more abrupt to me, as well.
I went for a morning walk yesterday while it was still minus at least one and it was so beautiful. Frosted leaves, sparkling branches and amazing blue skies with white rays of sunshine spearing through the almost bare branches in the foreground, while the backdrop of trees formed a multicolour patchwork reminiscent of the skirts my mother used to knit when I was little.
After the walk (and a little break to empty the dishwasher) I settled on the sofa to finish reading the novel I was close to finishing (Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie, which I loved) with a bit hot mug of tea and a blanket over my knees and I felt exactly where I needed to be.
I spend a lot of time wanting to be traveling, planning future travel (and a reasonable amount of time actually traveling, I guess). Not because I don’t love my home or my family - I do, I really do! But because I love seeing new things, being surrounded by conversations in languages that are not my mother tongue (ones I understand and ones I don’t), watching different body language, observing different architecture, sitting breathing in the sea air and losing myself in the sound and sight of the waves - and much, much more.
But at this time of the year, the overwhelming urge is not to jump on the next Eurostar crossing the channel, but to cosy up and hibernate. To light candles and wood fires, to snuggle under blankets, with a cat curled on my lap, to make frothy hot chocolates and to curl up in an armchair or sofa and read, read, read, read. (Which, actually, can be a whole other way to travel and explore the world. Books are where I satisfied my wanderlust during those lockdown years.) Or watch Christmas movies with the family or play board games with the heater on and maybe a splash of Baileys (there is a bottle waiting to be opened on 1 December, when the tree will also go up).
My head tends to still be full (maybe even fuller) of ideas of new projects to illustrate or to pitch or new things to write or changes to make the house, but my physical abilities seem to want to limit themselves to sleeping, reading and cooking warming beany casseroles and pies (if only the rest of the family would eat them, too!).
The ideas will mostly fill up my notebooks and sketchbooks and I will need to remember to read through them come the first glimmers of Spring and hope that they still resonate. Because I’ll mostly only manage to get through the work that has to be done - extra-curricular stuff will need to wait, however exciting the ideas sound.
I am going to embrace this and go with the flow of the season and slow the **** down and enjoy hibernation mode fully. And I might actually be able to hold out until January before the itchy feet make themselves known and have me planning the next trip.
Other hibernators
Clearly, I’m not the only person who feels this way at this time of year.
wrote a wonderful Substack post about the Art of Hibernation a couple of days ago:
And Emma Beddington wrote about Cosy Living in today’s Observer.
I am sure there are many more out there – do share if you’ve written or read a hibernation or autumn/winter cosy/slow post or article, and I’ll add it in here.