What February brings

Last week I heard someone mention that we'd reached the mid-point of winter. What? Do we really have so much more snow and cold ahead of us?

The official start of winter comes with the solstice on the 23rd December. But I think most of us experience this in quite a different way. At some point, as autumn fades away and we lose the warming colours and begin to live in a starker landscape we feel, 'Winter is here'. Also, we gradually don warmer clothes, and the day or night comes when we need gloves, and then hats and then scarves. Eventually, we're completed garbed in winter woollies. So I think it's hard to pinpoint the moment when we feel 'Winter is truly here'.

Anyhow, here we are in February. Apart from the years when I flew off to the Southern Hemisphere, I've found February to be my most creative month. It's shaping up in that direction even now. Why this is, I've no idea, but maybe it has to do with the kind of inside life I lead at this time, which also equals the kind of inner life I lead at this time. I wonder if other writer friends find the same... or, more broadly put, if any of my readers find it so.

Years ago scientists from somewhere or other proclaimed 'The brain functions best at a temperature of 9 degrees'. Not me. At that temp I'd be running on the spot or doing star jumps to warm myself up. To my relief I read a different opinion recently: that we do best at around 21 degrees.

Excuse me while I go and crank up the heating a couple of notches!