Winter

I hate winter. That's to say I hate the winters I normally have to endure - I mean just cold wet, miserable weather - if there is a snowfall it is usually a one day thing quickly followed by rain and slush. I just hate it, the mud, glaur and shittyness of it. But I do like real winter, you know the kind of winter you get if you're lucky enough to live somewhere like ... New York. Now that's a good winter. Freezing cold enough to stop the trains and snowfalls that smother the whole state.

Have you ever experienced that magical moment when you get up in the morning and you look out of the window, and the snow is just fucking car-deep. There's that glorious light refelecting off of the new snow and if you're really lucky it's still coming down in lumps. You leap with tingling anticipation to the TV and the announcer is announcing in drama-laden tones that the trains are off. Yippee! Quickly check the cupboards - food enough, coffee to brew, bread to toast, fridge full of goodies. A whole day - a whole glorious day ahead of doing nothing but looking out of the window at the gorgeous streetscape, brewing coffee and reading. Bliss.

It's happened to me only a couple of times, three at most; twice when I was living in Hoboken and once was in Riga in Latvia one October about ten years ago. I was staying in a hotel then in the old city centre looking out onto streets devoid of trolley cars and people struggling to get to anywhere, and I just sat at the window and smiled like I had won the lottery. I think it's the cosy, trapped inside, back to the womb, kind of feeling that I really like. It's a feeling best experienced, in my opinion, alone.