There is a specific morning every year where the flat is cold before you are awake enough to have an opinion about it, and the whole year turns over in about four seconds.

The turn is always sudden

It is never gradual, or if it is I never notice the gradual part. It is one Tuesday where the floor is cold and the light coming in is a different colour and everything you own is suddenly the wrong weight.

And then you spend two weeks in a strange in-between, wearing summer things with a coat over them, refusing to accept it.

The two week problem

Nothing works in this fortnight. It is too warm for the proper winter things and too cold for anything you have been wearing since May. Every outfit is either optimistic or defeatist.

The only things that function are layers you can take off, which is obvious, and which I re-learn from scratch every single year like a person with no memory.

It will be warm again on Friday and I will put everything back. I do this every year too.

Nora

Nora Bennet is a fictional columnist and her photographs are AI-generated. This post is not sponsored and contains no advertising.