We’ve both got a cold and an attitude and an overdeveloped sense of winter angst. As we walk towards the castle I tell him that it’s sad, we don’t spend very much time in Oxford anymore, we’re always skirting around it, it’s almost like we’re afraid of it though really I know it’s only because everything we need–the pub, the office, our friends and family–are also on the outskirts. Every day I cycle to work and I manage, going from one far end of the city to the other, to avoid the centre altogether.

He says it’s only because of the weather, which is miserable and makes us like hermits.

I say that there was a time when if a shop closed down and a new one opened up in its stead I would know instantly; now it might be months before I noticed. I wonder to myself how many things have changed without me knowing. There are roadworks on the High street that make it almost impassable; I’ve avoided it for months, and now, for the first time in a long time, I take a moment to observe the mannequins in shop windows, the half-hearted early springtime displays, the canary yellow macs and peep-toed heels.

He doesn’t seem perturbed by it but I can’t stop thinking about how long it’s been since I sat on the steps of the Clarendon building watching Japanese tourists pose for photos and flush-faced American undergrads in groups, hiding under their new hoodies, watching women in heels and students in vintage brogues or else boots and tight skirts, toddlers tripping over the uneven stones. Our love was born here, doing these things, but that summer feels a very long time ago. Who was I then, with the time to waste on trivialities?

And who am I now, to think it might be a waste?

When we reach the castle we have dinner at a place I’ve never been before; it’s huge and dark and full of dolled-up girls with painted lips and high heels and a twentysomething-single-career-girl-attitude. I’m glad I’m not them but at least they don’t have a cold, I think. It’s a very American place, cavernous, full of booths and happy-hour menus and even the toilets downstairs trick me into thinking for an instant that I’m in New York or Los Angeles. I feel momentarily both homesick and repulsed.

It’s just winter, he tells me. We’ll walk around the city in spring, we tell each other, we’ll drink at all our old haunts and watch as many people as we like when it’s warm enough.

So until then I’ll spend time in my study, by the radiator, watching cats in the far end of the garden. There goes another one now, a new black-and-white thing, picking through the tangle of dead brush. And here I am in Oxford, missing Oxford. Humans are funny creatures, much funnier in a way than these aimless cats.

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In late winter I like to turn the heating on and then open the window and lie in bed pretending it’s summertime again.

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And so we arrive at that time of year when winter seems interminable. Your bones have been cold for so long that even a hot bath fails to thaw them. The English are invariably sullen over late-winter weather, and I’ve heard several times that we’re in it for the long haul this year, that we don’t stand a chance of an early Spring, as if we’re children, we’ve been badly behaved, the thermometers want to punish us.

I stand outside, in our back garden. It’s too bleak for words, the sticky black paste of mud and dead leaves, the naked shivering trees, the poignant abandoned laundry line, the table and chairs which have spent these long months buckling under snow and rain. I realize I haven’t stood in the garden for weeks. From my study window I have a view of it; I watch cats trying to catch birds, I see the neighbours’ sad detritus gathering mud, but I haven’t actually stood here, surveyed it at ground level, for too long. I miss standing in our garden, I realize.

Every once in awhile there is still the lingering dream of African light, of trade winds, spice, valleys like bowls; but mostly the mundane has crept back in. I like how local I feel, here, how we go to the pub on the end of our road for bloody marys and sandwiches, how well we know the roads, how predictable the fall of night is each evening, how every night is getting a tiny bit shorter. I like the idea that I will, over the next few months, slowly reacquaint myself with our garden. We will grow potatoes again, maybe. One day we will wake up and it will be warm enough to start to prune and dig, and the colour will start to come back into our cheeks, which have already turned pale again.

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Here we are, arrived again at Christmas. I’m wearing new slippers and Xander’s shirt and considering the vast quantities of varied foodstuffs I’ve consumed today.

It starts with church. I don’t do church, really, but the English are under the impression that their version of church isn’t particularly church-y; that is, they seem to think that singing endless rounds of carols which proclaim undying love for Jesus has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with tradition. And of course the funny thing is that they’re right; nobody I’ve met sings those carols with pious intent, they sing them because afterwords there is mulled wine and mince pies and the unmistakable buzz of Christmas.

So I acquiesce to church in this case, and dutifully ignore the purple banner above the pulpit, emblazoned with a crown, which reminds us all that Jesus is “King of Kings, Lord of Lords.” We’re seated next to the orchestra, a motley but well-meaning bunch ranging in age from 10 to 90 (or so it appears). I’m directly in front of one of the young violinists, who scrapes her bow against the strings with both carelessness and great concentration, as if she can’t quite bring herself to commit to playing this instrument which is so clumsily slung beneath her chin, but knows she needs to make a sound. Then one of the flutists, in her early teens, reads a passage from the Bible with a glassy voice that would make the BBC proud (she read the same passage last year, as I remember, and seems to have improved her delivery). We sing some more. Perhaps the vicar makes a speech, but I’m overcome with a pleasing sensation of happiness and can’t bring myself to pay attention to whatever point he’s trying to make by unwrapping a gift in front of the congregation; if I listen closely, I might be made to feel guilty, and this mood doesn’t leave any room for guilt.

After, we glide over the ice to the car. The fog of the morning has lifted. Earlier a white mist, half-lit by the sun, had draped itself over the trees. Now, though warmth is spreading, there are patches of snow in the fields; Bing Crosby comes on the radio, and it’s the whitest Christmas I’ve ever seen, anyway.

We have coffee. We open gifts. We overeat, and circumstance persuades me to nibble on a brussels sprout or two although the taste is too acrid for my liking, almost maliciously acrid, I think, as if the vegetable is laughing at us all. We light the Christmas pudding and watch the blue glow; then we pour various kinds of cream over it and try to pretend that we’re still hungry enough to eat more. Then we have some dessert wine and play charades, which ends with me trying to mime the word “saving” by rescuing a crumb from some unseen plight. We nap; I have the feeling that I could sleep the whole night through, but at about 8 o’clock I rouse myself for some tea. I nibble on chocolates, pay a cursory amount of attention to the television, flip through books; we’re all only half-present, it seems.

We’ve forgotten what outside looks or feels like. In this insulated world the rhythm of the day is dictated by baths and naps and meals and snacks. It’s nice somehow, like disappearing completely for awhile, like holing up during a storm. We make plans to go for a walk tomorrow. Maybe there will be snow on the ground, I’m thinking.

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Why do we do it? Every year. There’s this point at which suddenly you realize you’ve come too far. It was nice for awhile; the crisp air, fauvist leaves, log fires, mulled cider. Then one day you wake up and the leaves have all fallen and made a wet black paste on your garden path. The sun sets at 3:55 pm. Even the trees are shivering. Here you are again. Arrived on the doorstep of winter. Ahead of you the months stretch: a lonely highway of sub-zero temperatures, fickle snowfall, dark mornings, sore throats from dry central heating.

Why do we do it? We don’t have to do it. Where I come from the mild cool of the season is refreshing, not heart-wrenching. Things blossom, turn green. The rainfall is unpredictable and comes in waves; one wet week, one dry. Things flood. The sea turns brown. The days are still warm enough to warrant a little sunbathing at midday, if you’re so inclined. If people wear coats at all it’s because a thousand photographs and films have told them that this is how people dress in December. Obviously I mis-remember it because I am not there. I glorify it and pretend that the storms don’t wear on the soul, that the isolation of a flooded week is not enough to anyone crazy, that there aren’t chilly days spent huddled by the heater with a mug of tea. But still.

Here we seek solace in distractions, easy fixes. Vitamins and vacations. We think if we stay under the lamplight for long enough we’ll somehow also stay afloat. We look forward with impassioned tenderness to Spring, even though we know it will be an uncomfortable season of waiting and hoping and accidentally under-dressing. We mope and we drink too hard and we sniffle and cough and think no-one’s ever gone through this before. Even though, obviously, hundreds of thousands of people have, and will, and are.

But then, there’s something good, too. The first flecks of snow on a pale cheek. The cheer of Christmas, the warmth of a pub fireplace. A brisk walk. The need for a coat. Why do we do it? I guess because, after all, it’s reassuring, it reassures us of the cyclical nature of things. It tells us, not everything is unpredictable. It’s so unfailingly predictable, in fact, that it’s comforting as a warm summer day, if you really think about it. For those of us who are afraid we might ever take things for granted, it says, don’t take things for granted. We do it because otherwise we would be adrift. It’s something to hold on to.

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