Solstice

It is December 21st, the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year and the beginning of winter and as I walk from my flat along the Avon to St.Nicholas Market, there are scullers training on the river.

I’ve never fully grasped what the English mean by a leaden sky until now. It is as if someone has stretched the heavens taught, then drenched them with layer on layer of battleship grey paint, until not a whisper of detail remains: no reflection, no texture, no features, just relentless mid grey in every direction, forever.

This is the English winter sky, and in part it’s responsible for the scullers on the river, as, along with the Gulf Stream, which brings warmth all the way across the Atlantic from the Gulf of Mexico, this featureless sky and its layers of  flat cloud keep that warmth in, keep the river from freezing, keep the scullers on the water.

Given that I am about 900 km north of Toronto, where it is cold and snowing, you begin to realize just how essential it is that we not disrupt nature’s habits.

In 2010, Britain experienced the coldest winter in a century: the  rivers froze, snow clogged the narrow streets and made the hilly terrain completely impassible, the railways ground to a halt, crippled by snow and cold, the airports barely functioned.

Nobody sculled that winter.

And it demonstrated, painfully, brutally, what happens when a climate suddenly changes, when the elements roil and turn on you.

There are some meteorologists predicting another wickedly cold winter in Europe starting in January.

The scullers on the Avon better row while they can.