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Winter.

It’s in the blood. It’s not so much a season as a state, woven into people; stamped, stained. I know this to be true because I thought this would be harder. Early days, I know, but being plucked from blues and reds of an Australian summer’s sharp outlines and dumped into the moist of England’s winter, I had thought … I had thought I would cry more. But it is something in the body that the cells recognise, they know, they adapt.

It was immediately harder to see. When the pavements, buildings and drab fields are a monochrome grey, smeared with a putrid fog and the sky lingers in bluish twilight for seven hours, I found myself squinting. I rubbed my eyes and cleaned my glasses repeatedly, until I realised the very air is thicker here, and seeing through it is harder – disorientating after the brightness of Australia, where even my myopic eyes seemed buffed clean.

Those were the first impressions. The next, most significant, was that I tested positive for COVID immediately and that fucked up everything.

Thus from isolation, I have had time to contemplate winter. On the narrow, crowded motorways to home, I felt smothered by the very burden of familiarity – a recognition so strong it seemed to supersede the last three beautiful years, to override them like reality asserting after a wonderful dream. Like being crushed by it. It reminded me of walking along Rainham marshes with mum a few years ago, and arriving back in Purfleet, where I grew up. There was a deadening feeling of familiarity, like a weight of inheritance – no matter how far you go, this is you, and this is it, you can’t escape it. My Essex accent asserts immediately over three years of drawling ‘righto,’ bare trees like birch brooms nod, kangaroos and blood red birds evaporate into fantasy and cold is recognised.

And winter. But it was less of a shock than I thought. We arrived in Brentwood, to three sunny days in a row and our invisible, winter-coloured birds of greys and browns singing loud colours I’d forgotten. The sky is a pale blue, the shadows through the white gold light are long like a splendid and forlorn sunset. Light is gentle, moist, fallow. As I spent much of the first day sat on the windowsill I realised I have so rarely passed such a meditative day in winter. Normally I am demoning through mock papers, assessments and trying to think up cool shit for the end of term to try and remind young people that school is not just about being beaten with the exam stick. I don’t look up to breathe – then weekends; even on the boat in the middle of our rural idyll, were frantic all winter with getting water, washing and shopping and then finishing that marking before you lose the light. Or I was drunk, dulling the misery of winter. I can’t think of a time when I have had moments to stare out at the wintry daylight and watch it.

It’s in the blood. You remember what to do. I have lived cosily under a blanket for several days, draped dramatically in scarves. The sunshine is tender and gentle and moisture oozes out the very atmosphere – drink, drink it deep, quench a three year thirst. I’m surprised we don’t all have gills and webbed limbs here; as we swim through a wet cloud that has descended upon us that mutes visibility and the air is wet even though it isn’t raining. My skin feels less scratchy – I will go slimy like an eel. There is no desperate watching of clouds and mapping the hills and rivers to squeeze out every drop. Catchment here means where your kids go to school. So much water. And it is beautiful in its different way. Spiderwebs adorned with drops, that sort of thing; all those cliches. But I can prod these spiderwebs with my fingers without any red-backed vengeance. Yesterday was cloudy and misty so I collected my anthology of vampire tales and sat in the garden, wrapped in more blankets than a Victorian invalid and got my Goth on. It was great. Hot tea, lean into the gothic, blankets, scarves and enjoy the ghostly mists and birds.

Of birds; I miss the cordial friendliness of our cockies and galahs, shuffling over to see what you’re doing. But these bluetits and blackbirds remind me of the importance of stillness. So be still, and watch. Read, write. Stay in, make hot chocolate, get cold so you can get warm again. Winter is not something you screw your eyes up tight to, holding your breath and hoping it’ll be over soon. You have to live it, here. Sit with it.

It’s in the blood.