Grey skies...

This morning we woke up to rain lashing on the windows. The sky had a grey lid on it, with trailing edges allowing in a faint gleam of pale light. The wind was buffeting around the house, yanking the remaining orangey-brown leaves off our apple tree and discarding them onto the sodden grass below. No biking to school today...

This is the weather that people meant when they said, "Moving back to England? But the weather is so awful..."

Today I wore my brand new (!!) long black belted coat, feeling a bit glam. But, as I walked along the pavement to where I was meeting a friend, the wind blew my hair straight upwards in a hilarious cloud around my head. You know, when you walk into the wind, it blows your hair back off your face, and you feel all strong and pioneer-like and as if it is making you beautiful. But when you walk with the wind behind you, it blows your hair forward so that a) you can't see where you're going, and b) you look like an idiot.  The wind always seems to be blowing from behind me... (And of course I do have the wrong sort of hair for it.)

It got dark at four-thirty today, and we drove home from school in the drizzle, under the street lights.

I remember many of my ex-pat friends in Uganda talking about missing the seasons. Well, I've got the seasons, all right.

I am not sure I love the seasons. My problem is, I just want to be comfortable. A friend noticed that in me when I was a student. He said I was like a cat who just wanted to find somewhere to be comfortable and sleep all day. I think there is some truth in that. I do like a challenge, but not too hard of a challenge. I don't like change. I hate having to do things that makes me nervous, - but not so much that I turn them down - I just usually find myself muttering at some point "I really wish I wasn't doing this." And, to the point here, I do not like being cold...

On the other hand, I do like getting out all my woolly jumpers and scarves and wrapping up warm. I love sitting by a cosy fire - who doesn't. I love the current trend for everything knitted. And I like the feeling of putting away t-shirts and flip-flops, letting those clothes have a rest for the winter, and wearing something different.

But I lived without the four-season cycle for so many years, I must have long lost that sense of the year passing through a beautiful and predictable cycle. When I went to Zambia in 1992, the year was utterly divided into two - October to April, it rained every day for about twenty minutes. May to September, it never rained. Not once, ever. Zimbabwe also had two seasons, hot and wet (summer), cold and dry (winter). But it did vary much more and could be wet for days at a time. Uganda I found so random - whilst there were gradual progressions from warmer to hotter, windy to still, rainy to dry, it was never really predictable. I concluded that when it rained "it is the wet season" and when it didn't rain "it is the dry season", or after two weeks of no rain, "now it is a drought."

I don't know how long it will take me to come to love the turning of the seasons here, but I imagine I will be pretty happy when spring comes! I do love spring, I think it might be my favourite.