I’ve been reminded by a mild spell and the sight of the sunshine that the weather makes a huge difference to how I live and how I feel about it. I do like to see the change in seasons, although I prefer all other changes to when it gets darker and danker. I lived once in a tropical country and I must confess to not having necessarily missed a temperate climate while I was there.
When I did some research on other British expatriates returning to the UK from Singapore, though, I found that some people were glad to get back to a Northern European climate. Partly, they enjoyed being cooler in general and being able to be more active without over-heating. The other thing they enjoyed about being back was seeing the change in the seasons through the year.
My favourite season is Spring because things only get better from the start of Spring, for a while at least. Other people were most happy to have Autumns (or Falls) again, perhaps because of their preference for being a bit cooler. Log fires and crunchy carpets of fallen leaves were particular favourites, things in rather short supply in the tropics. The seasons are not just important in an abstract way, they are important for how people live: snuggling up in front of a log fire in a cosy house; or going out for a walk in a forest while trees shed their red and orange leaves underfoot.
Home climates are different depending on where you’re from, but wherever it is they doubtless affect how you live: how you feel, what you wear, what you eat, the view from the window, the pattern of events in the day and year. All of these things go into making us feel at home because of how familiar and natural they are.
For my part, though, however cosy and familiar it might be to spend wintry evenings wrapped up at home, I am glad to see the first snowdrops pushing out of the ground and to know that Spring will find its way back to London. After the next cold snap, anyway.
Madeleine Hatfield 