Winter is coming. It is a forecast whose power to perturb was, until now, largely confined to the denizens of Westeros. For the rest of us, particularly those who live in cities, or in the temperate south of these islands, the reality of the season has been blurrier. While magazines celebrated the strenuously curated Nordic cosiness that is hygge, the reality was more like a slightly disappointing summer. Last year we had roses blooming in December and the grass kept growing all winter. Indoors, any hint of chill swiftly banished with a slight upwards shift of the thermostat.
A year and an energy crisis later, that shift of the thermostat seems as exotic as something that happened in a dream. Our garden is still full of roses, the lawn a shaggy expanse of green; but winter is coming and with it a sense of icy foreboding. John Lewis reports brisk sales of hot-water bottles – up 219 per cent on last year; electric blankets, thermal layers, and even Winceyette bedding are also trending.
I have a sense of deja vu about all this. I grew up in a house without a thermostat. For heating (and an erratic supply of hot water), we relied on a coal-fired boiler, which required vigorous riddling, and the carrying through the kitchen by my father of the ash-pan, sprinkling a fine drift of powdered clinker over our morning toast. In the living-room, a coal fire scorched our fronts while our backs froze; in the bedrooms, Winceyette pyjamas and hot water bottles offered little protection against a cold so insidious that frost flowers bloomed on the insides of the windows. If the indoor climate of our house had had a soundtrack, it would have been the hectic “brrrr” of Winter from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
All this early exposure to cold should have made me hardy. Instead it gave me a lifelong dread of not being warm enough; but also a certain perverse resistance to central heating, that mortal enemy of complexions, old furniture, and pianos. Living as I now do, in another chilly house where the weather creeps in through cracks and keyholes, I find my mind turning to the stratagems of those past years.
Multiple layers of stout jumpers (my grandmother was an indefatigable knitter), sturdy stews (Simon Hopkinson’s neck of lamb with pearl barley is warmth in edible form, as is his apple and mincemeat suet pudding); and in place of a hot water bottle, a small animal to warm one’s toes. On mediaeval tombs they favour greyhounds; in our case, a cat whose distant origins lie in subarctic Arkhangelsk.
Facing the coming winter with all its hardships seems a formidable task. But we have been here before; and with distant memories of humour and resilience in dark times, we sort of know what to do.
Too good-looking?
Lewis Gribben, the actor who plays Danny, the 18-year-old protagonist of the Channel 4 drama, Somewhere Boy, says that actors cast in teen dramas are “just too good-looking”, citing as evidence the absurdly exquisite Timothée Chalamet.
He has a point. Looking back at school photographs from the 1970s, I am struck by how startlingly plain we all look by comparison with today’s teenage girls.
It isn’t that we lacked vanity: we infuriated our teachers by following to the letter the beauty advice of Jackie magazine. But without the spur of social media, the sense of being constantly judged was lacking, and we mostly settled for being ourselves – give or take a swipe of turquoise eye shadow.
Humour and resilience will get Britain through this chilly season
Facing the coming winter with all its hardships seems a formidable task. But we have been here before