What I thought I looked like in winter. Image via tumblr.

The formative years of my social life were spent in a third-floor flat overlooking a park in the centre of a provincial town. While the flights of stairs up to the living space were a minor inconvenience when drunk, the building itself was within comfortable staggering distance of all my favourite hostelries. I walked to work and even when the sun was shining,  the sounds of happy families kicking footballs and feeding ducks drifting through the open window, I preferred to stay indoors with my flat-mate, mocking passers-by and conducting cost/benefit analyses on purchasing out of date alcohol from the dodgy shopkeeper up the road.

In other words, the changing of the seasons was an abstract concept – one that troubled my already overworked bank account when the winter heating bill arrived in February, but little more. It was only when I moved to the countryside that I realised the sheer, unutterable misery the changing seasons can hurl upon one at will.

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