Garth George: I am really not a winter person

It passed almost without notice, but for me it was a cause for rejoicing: last Saturday was the shortest day of the year. So from now on it's all on the up and up.

I hate winter. I detest the cold and I loathe the wind and the rain, and thank God that so far we haven't had much of them. I struggle to keep a straight face and my mouth shut when I hear people say, "I love the cold". It is significant, perhaps, that most of them are naturally well-padded.

At this time of the year I have to force myself to get up every morning, abhor having to take my constitutional before the sun is properly up, and resent having to pull the curtains late in the afternoon to keep the heat in.

For all that, winter has arrived much later than it did last year, and we were eased into it gradually, I am feeling the onset of my usual winter mindset - bleak and grey like the temperature and the skies and the bare trees around our suburban village. I am, in short, not a winter person.

As Mark Twain put it: "[Winter] is a time when one's spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death."

The onslaught of winter in the past few weeks has brought to an end one of the longest (it started early in November) and warmest summers in Rotorua for yonks. Sadly, it is already just a memory, for these mornings when I go for my morning walk round the neighbourhood, I am burdened with thermal underwear, tracksuit, heavy, padded jacket, woolly hat pulled down over my ears and thick gloves.

The inverter heat pump in which we invested last spring, and which proved itself as an air-conditioner in the height of summer, is now pumping out heat morning and night. It will be interesting to see, when the next power bill arrives, how it compares with the economy of the big gas heater we relied on in winters past.

Which reminds me of a German proverb I came across once which says: "Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat."

I suppose I could take consolation, too, that I don't have to live in Invercargill where I was brought up and where winter lasts for seven months or more and what passes for summer is brief.

I wrote a few years ago that I was hoping that after a few winters in this part of the country, which is much colder than Auckland, I would acclimatise. Yet, after five winters here, that hasn't happened.

I guess I forgot to factor in increasing age which seems to have made me more sensitive both to heat and to cold. The onset of winter seems to provide a slightly bigger shock to the system as every year goes by.

I simply can't conceive of how elderly folk who can't afford adequate heating manage to survive. But, then, a fair few don't. The death notice index always seems longer in winter, particularly after really cold snaps.

There are, however, a couple of antidotes to winter blues, things we can do that might not only bring comfort to ourselves, but will greatly benefit others.

"Laughter," wrote Victor Hugo, "is the sun that drives winter from the human face". And there is a Turkish proverb which says, "A kind word warms a man throughout three winters".

So let this season for all of us be full of laughter and kind words - until spring relieves us of its burden.

garth.george@hotmail.com