Wake me up when September ends

Well, it’s September, then. That sucks.

And I know: I know everyone who reads this will be all, “Yay! Winter! There will be long walks in the crisp Autumn leaves, while wearing long scarves and looking just like Ali McGraw in Lovestory! And there will be chestnuts roasting on an open fire! Yay, yay, and thrice yay!” And when you say this, I will nod and smile, but secretly I will be thinking “The hell?” Do these people live inside a movie or something? Because, seriously, I don’t even KNOW anyone who has an open fire, so all of you people who look forward to snuggling up in front of one while the snow falls picturesquely outside the window may as well be on another planet as far as I’m concerned. I mean, I guess I could try to roast chestnuts/marshmallows on one of the radiators, but I just don’t think I would get the same effect, somehow.

Long walks, kicking up the crisp Autumn leaves, as if in the montage scene of a movie? Nah. Here we just go directly from “what passes for summer” to “Holy crap, it’s freaking WINTER”. We do not pass ‘Go’. We do not kick up the crisp Autumn leaves. And we certainly don’t look anything like Ali McGraw in Lovestory, because, well, that was actually a movie. As I’ve said before, there is no such thing as winter “fashion” in Scotland, because we just have to wear everything at once. Or at least, I do.

From this, you’ll gather that I’m not exactly enthused about the end of summer. (It actually ended about six weeks ago, here, obviously, but it’s taken the rest of the world a while to catch up.) This weekend I had planned to do my annual wardrobe switchover, when I pack away all my (mostly unworn) summer dresses and short-sleeved tops and get out all of the warm sweaters and thermal underwear I live in for 8 months of the year, but I just couldn’t face it. It was too soon. So, instead, I went shopping.

Before you get excited, though, it wasn’t THAT kind of shopping – you know, the kind that’s actually FUN? It was a “stock up on winter essentials” kind of trip, and it was actually fairly successful, if not exactly enjoyable: last winter I bought a bunch of stuff I didn’t actually wear because it was always too cold and miserable, so this year I decided to just accept the inevitable: that I will be wearing roughly the same outfit from now until next May, and so I bought some warm sweaters and a scarf, and no shoes whatsoever. (Not that I won’t be wearing shoes, you understand: just that I won’t be wearing particularly nice ones, because it will be wet and freezing all the time.) I was hoping that, by doing this, I could force the summer to hang on for just a little longer, just to spite me,  but nah: last night we were actually woken up by the sound of the torrential rain hammering on the window, and today it’s more or less “winter”.

I wish I could hibernate until Spring.

(I know: here I am complaining about the weather and SOME PEOPLE DON’T GOT NO WEATHER! The cheek of me.)