And Another Thing | 3 January 2009

This is the time of year when I repeat Christina Rossetti’s lines

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron
Water like a stone.

November was as cold as I remember this once-muggy, foggy month. And December even harder. The Met Office says the rest of winter will be severe, and this is the first of a cold series. I am prepared. I have two lovely, comfortable scarves, one of white, of pure cashmere, bought at an Armani sale by that Prussian beauty Lady Niti Gowrie, which somehow found its way to me, and I also possess an immense long red thing of wool, from MoMA in New York, with matching gloves, a present from Drue Heinz to my wife, which I appropriated as the spoils of war. What war? Why, the war between the sexes of course, particularly hard fought in midwinter, when useful warm properties are pinched by both sides.