I began this 'little guide' for fun regarding some of my personal bête-noires and had hoped to finish it this side of Crimbo. I have two more which will have to be postponed until next year as I like to do goals for the year early January. 

This was intended to be part 8 but as it contains some seasonal references I have decided it will be the last one before Christmas.

Snow

Yes, the white stuff. How can it be a pet hate, you ask, it looks so beautiful, big fluffy feathers falling whimsically from the sky and transforming even the most mundane scenery into a magical wonderland. Even your wheelie bin, with its white hat and soft base looks like a treasured thing. And I will concede the best thing about snow IS it’s beauty and is to be captured on film or as a 'still' from your iPhone’s camera, preferably through the window from the warmth of your sitting room to share and delight in when it’s long gone. But that’s where it ends. It’s cold. It turns to slush. It goes grey and filthy. Worse. It becomes a lethal skating rink of cobbled ice, threatening to upend you and have you cold-footing it to A & E to check which of your precious old bones may have fractured. Kids love it, of course, and young couples might find it romantic but post middle age most of us hate it. You have to trust cats on this. They look out on their territory with justifiable suspicion and refuse to venture out in it when the door’s held open for them. They don’t want cold wet stuff on their paws any more than we do.

'Cat' by guvo59 courtesy of pixabay

Meteorological spring (and summer, autumn and winter) 

It’s what BBC weather people say on March 1st, June 1st, September 1st and December 1st respectively. But when I was a gal, Spring began on March 21st, summer on June 21st and so on.

If you do a quick Google you will see that the old way is based on the astronomical seasons based on the earth's position in relation to the sun, while meteorological seasons are based on the annual temperature cycle.

Well, you can prefix a season with the word meteorological all you like but it ain’t going to change the seasons. As my birthday is just ahead of the Summer Solstice for instance I have often observed that the real summer weather frequently comes after 21st June. Similarly the real bitterly cold weather frequently occurs from late December onwards. So I’m sticking with the tried and tested.

Fresh Air Fiends*

Now don’t get me wrong, I love a warm breeze or a cool breeze on a stiflingly hot airless summer’s day. But opening windows when it’s winter or forty five degrees Fahrenheit outside? What’s that all about? I can understand people wanting to freshen their sleep-stale rooms for a couple of minutes but there are some people who insist on windows open all the time. They see or feel the central heating is on and insist on throwing a window open whatever the outside temperature. There they are flinging off their cardigans and there’s poor old me, putting on my hat, coat and scarf and after a few minutes asking if anyone minds if I shut the window please, earning me a few odd looks. Are you going down with something do you think, they ask. Well, I will if you leave that darned window open any longer. And don’t get me started on Aircon. I started travelling first class on trains, having found the standard class more and more of a struggle over the years, and with a railcard it was surprisingly reasonable. No longer sparsely populated by men in bowler hats (if it ever was), you also got a complimentary drinks and snacks. But along with that, especially on Cross Country trains, you also got cold air blasted down your neck in February courtesy of the Aircon. I lost count of the times I had to ask the train manager to turn it off or down. Why they think we pay for first class to sit in a arctic blast defies belief.

* This, of course, was written pre-Covid and the importance of getting ventilation in to dilute the virus can't be stated enough.  But for folks like me who have strange body temperatures, we just have to avoid  all this fresh air stuff.

            Blur-1 by Pexels Courtesy of Pixabay

Christmas Songs 

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, Frosty The Snowman and all those endless festive tunes that are piped through stores once the Ghosts of Halloween have taken off on their broomsticks.  Of the Christmas pop songs there are one or two notable exceptions - 'Merry Christmas War Is Over' by John and Yoko Ono is a fabulous song of which I never tire (but then I don’t overplay it and neither do the stores.  Greg Lake ‘I Believe In Father Christmas’ is another classic. Slade’s ‘Merry Christmas Everybody’ was once a classic and when it first came out it was iconic. Now it’s just become a raucous cliche.  I suppose the same could be said for many Christmas carols but I’d still rather hear most of them than Slade.

Well, that's all for now and apologies if this all sounds a bit Bah Humbug but I hope you've enjoyed the posts throughout the year and I really do wish you all the best festive season as possible in the current circumstances!  

And all the best for 2022!