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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We tell ghost stories on the way home.  It’s dark; Port Meadow is black, the river is silver and still.  We have bike lights and a parafin lantern.  A mist covers the ground, as if we’re wading through it.  I can see my breath, feel the tingle of my fingers. 

Earlier we walked the other direction.  It was early afternoon, light, grey, the trees bent over the water.  The dog picked up impractical sticks and we sipped from a small bottle of whiskey.  Amazing how quickly we could be palpably outside the city.  Smelling woodsmoke from narrowboats and surrounded by green and brown; the golden stones of Oxford had dissolved, the spires dissapeared behind a puffy cloud.  My wellies rubbed raw a spot on my foot, the same spot on the same foot that had been rubbed raw so many times before.  We came to a crumbling nunnery; now just a field walled in, the outline of a church.  We ate apples at the pub and drank wine waiting for our lunch. 

Now we tell ghost stories but there’s nothing eerie about this stillness.  The eerie part is re-entering the city, coming suddenly to a well-lit bridge, passing parked cars, pubs, restaurants, cashpoints, closed shops, kebab vans.  It’s crowded, though there aren’t many people out tonight. 

Meanwhile, I’ll get back into blogging, but my time seems to be consumed at the moment by a thousand little things–working, writing, eating, sleeping, cleaning, running, planning.  Strolling along the river.  Stay tuned.

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Yet once it was the busiest haunt,
Whither, as to a common centre, flocked
Strangers, and ships, and merchandise

–From Queen Mab by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I’ve got a cold.  Outside, the world is soggy, and inside, my spirits have been dampened by my own self-pity.  I tried to turn my phone on today and couldn’t.  It appears to be hibernating; no longer interested in being the vehicle for my pathetic communication with the world, no longer interested in alerting me to text messages from 02 and phone calls from the bank, no longer interested in taking snapshots of autumn leaves.  If it does decide never to work again, it will be a shame in more ways than one.  I depend on the device; more than I thought I possibly could.  All my photos from Dublin will be gone; speaking of which, with what will I express my photographic creativity?  How will I wake up in the mornings, now that my alarm clock has gone to sleep itself?

But that’s not the point, really.  The devices we rely on are replaceable (though expensive).  The point is that I’m in self-pity land, sniffling on the couch, feeling a million miles away from everyone else.  There’s a funny thing that happens when I’m ill; suddenly, even as I’m walking past the pub on my way to the shop to buy some soup, I have a sense that I can’t connect with anyone.  There’s a wall, or, more accurately, a screen, a pane of fogged glass.  I can see out into the world but I can’t interact with it, not wholly.  I can smell the warmth and the spilled beer from the pub but I can’t go in.

All of it is self-constructed, of course; none of it is serious.  But here I am, barely through October, already longing again for summer.  I haven’t enjoyed the crispness of the air this year as much as I usually do; I still feel that it should still be August.  This isn’t so much to do with the damp English summers as it is to do with my calender for those precious few warm months.  Being that busy made the time pass too quickly; I still feel as if I’m trying to catch up with myself, with the days and months which marched doggedly on.  I’m connected to everyone, everywhere, all the time; I spend hours on the internet, can email my parents in California or send a message to a friend around the corner in the same amount of time.  But somehow I’ve lost a sense of being connected to myself.  At a certain point today, cycling home–and maybe this was just the cold speaking–I actually had this sense that I was floating along, that my tires weren’t really touching the asphalt.

Mostly, I just need to write, which I haven’t done in too long. And until I do, I’ll probably continue to pump out these anthems to my own frustration, so I hope, for your sake as well as mine, I sort it out soon.

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