Windscreens frozen, ground like iron, a vichyssoise of fog in the valleys – we’ve had the first intimations of a proper winter, and my friend’s blood is coursing. “Isn’t it the most exciting time of year?” he mumbled, from the depths of many layers of warm clothing. “I love the sharpness of the air, the crunch of frost underfoot.”
I’m with him. A lucky chum who has a house in the Caribbean told me about the temperature variance on Nevis; it will be 30C at Christmas, just as it was 30C in July. A superficially seductive prospect, I admit, but who wouldn’t rather have the drama of the changing year? Icicles hanging from the eaves, mulled wine simmering on the stove. As the 18th-century nature poet James Thomson put it, “Welcome kindred glooms!”
I don’t expect all readers to share this sentiment. It’s not much fun when Thomson’s “big torrent burst” is coming from a ruptured pipe. Life for commuters can be miserable, as they slither along icy lanes in the dark, or wait on windy platforms for cancelled trains. Nobody likes chilblains, or Marian’s nose looking “red and raw”, as Shakespeare had it. Besides, the garden has been blown to pieces.
But this is also a time of wonder. The beauty of the countryside in winter is subtler than that of the blousy months. Yes, it is a driftwood landscape, pared to the bone and bleached of colour; but it’s easier to spot woodpeckers when the leaves are off the trees.
You can also see mistletoe, rooks’ nests or the ragged nests (dreys) that squirrels make for themselves out of twigs: reds hibernate in them, greys stay half awake. This is the best time for seeing ducks. Not only are there greater numbers of them but the drakes have put on their brightest plumage.
While the solitary robin is a faithful garden friend, some other species are more clubbable; they get through the winter by making flocks. Suddenly a patch of woodland will be full of goldcrests, chaffinches or tits, devouring what they can before they just as suddenly move on. Thousands upon thousands of chattering starlings wheel from fields into the dusk sky in smoke-like murmurations. Watch out for them; populations have fallen by two-thirds since the 1970s, according to the British Trust for Ornithology.
Gardens become wraiths, a ghostly memory of their former selves. Some of summer’s pomps have been reduced to a collection of stalks and seed pods that barely merits the trip to the compost heap. But the architecture remains – not only walls, paths and (if you’re grand enough) statuary or urns, but the evergreens and plucky herbaceous plants that hang on with browning leaves. Wispy clematis seed heads seem all too like grey hairs, but falling leaves provide a store of gold. There will also be the diamonds of sparkling hoar frost with any luck; let’s hope so, because we need a good freeze to kill off the mega slugs that have been stalking the flower beds this summer, following a mild winter and cold spring.
Winter is the big reveal. Fine houses that would otherwise be hidden behind foliage are a delight to behold, their windows shining with an inviting light. Admittedly, winter does get cold, and it gets dark early. But the night air is scented with wood smoke, and the sharpness of a clear night seems to magnify the stars. Listen! You can almost hear the frost coming down. This is when condensation on the inside of windowpanes freezes into patterns unequalled by Tiffany – if you don’t have central heating. And after all, who needs it? Evolution has provided a sure means of keeping Jack Frost at bay: it’s called sloe gin. Which may be supplemented by a dram of whisky on Burns Night.
This is the time of nature’s annual disappearing act, when the earth retreats within itself and sensible animals, like the hedgehog, go to sleep. Home calls to us. We may stagger outside for a Boxing Day walk, but the great feast of 25 December is about the cheeriness of fireside, with the bleak midwinter kept firmly in its place.
So pull close the draught-excluding curtain and keep cold air from whistling under the door. Fill the hot water bottles. Put some chestnuts in the oven. Lay the table for a meal of stews, root vegetable soups or that sublimest of not-so-delicacies, steak and kidney – a heavy suet crust isn’t for summer eating. There are cost-free pleasures too, such as the walk through city streets on Christmas Eve when every window seems to glow with Christmas trees and festive preparation.
Rural homes rejoice in another kind of glow – from the logs on the hearth. If, like ours used to be, they are of the half-rotten kind that are pressed on you by a kindly relative, you may be blessed with the additional bounty of a stag beetle or two. Cherish them. They’re battling for survival in the 21st century.
As the song says, these are a few of my favourite things. And I’ll make the most of them. It may seem that winter – like the Brexit negotiation – goes on for ever but already spring bulbs are pushing their green noses above the brown quilt of our flowerpots. Camellia buds are forming. Enjoy what you can of the snow, if, as predicted, it arrives. Even now, with winter barely begun, you can sense the promise of spring.
Clive Aslet is editor-at-large of Country Life
