Winter fast approaches

Roaring fires in the living room fire place and soft fluffy socks - the best season for creature comforts, coziness, softly spoken words and exchanged smiles. Hot cocoa to drink and being shushed when the News came on at 8. The hiss and pop from the wood ablaze.

I remember walking home from the bus stop and being drenched to the bones by frosty raindrops. The gloriously dramatic and frightening storms at night and the thunder that would rattle the house and shake the many picture frames my mother had hung. Waking up to mirrors covered with bedsheets and blankets.

The drains overflowing and the guttering spluttering, erosion washing the front garden bed plants away. I remember reading "Arnie the Darling Starling" for the first time and my tears running in parallel to those down the window pane.

Dancing and laughing in the rain trying to find food with friends in the early morning, the black inkiness of the tar, glistened and polished by the standing water. Waiting in the library for the car to pull up and then dashing for it to lessen the drench effects once inside. Those icky sticky raincoats that I couldn't handle the feel of against my skin, urgggghhh. Even now the thought repulses me.

Slippery narrow passages kids all clambering over what seemed like a million outstretched legs, all lanky, our backs propped up against the walls. The booming cacophony of so many children's squeals, high pitched laughter and the occassional "shhh quiet down" from a prefect. They always looked like they had carrots up their asses. Sour bunch. Took life way too seriously.

It's weird how for some of us like me, I have lived my life by the seasons. They have held memories, feelings and part of my history, each year to come again, the recollections sometimes well up. I feel like I've seen many seasons, but the run up to winter never feels the same from one year to the next. There is for me a sense of nostalgia every year that is distinctly set apart from the other season's transitions. For all I freeze _{(to death)} in winter, perhaps it is my most transformative season, it's definitely my most memorable.