Whatever the weather the dogs have to be walked. Worse still, every couple of days I need to do (sorry to mention this) a pooper-scoop around the garden. Today I had to do both and as I was donning my protective clothing Frank Loesser’s famous song popped irritatingly into my head. Remember it? Dubious lyrics consisting of a host (male) trying to convince a guest (female) that it was too cold to go home. And a banal tune too. But enough, according to Wikipedia, to have been recorded over 400 times by amongst others Louis Armstrong and Lady Gaga. Not together of course.
It got me thinking: last week we were basking and this week freezing. Why and when does autumn end and winter begin? Another excuse to resort to the internet: winter is the coldest season and is caused by the axis of the earth being oriented away from the sun. Some cultures do indeed define the start of winter by the weather, but officially it depends on whether you’re referring to the astronomical or meteorological winter. Astronomical winter begins on December 21st this year and ends on 20th March 2022 and is determined by the degree of tilt of the earth’s rotational axis in relation to its orbit around the sun. In other words it begins with the day of the year with fewest hours of daylight, the winter solstice, and ends when the day is longer than the night, the spring equinox. The Meteorological winter is reckoned to be the three coldest months of the year, so is defined as December, January and February. So either way, here on November 30th, we’re officially still just in autumn. So here’s what it looks like, courtesy of Guiseppe Arcimboldo:
And here’s how Alphonse Mucha contrasts the two seasons:
And in case you’d like to know what Sussex looks in the autumn, here’s how I saw it:
But as far as I’m concerned, because the temperatures are hovering around freezing and there are more leaves on the ground than on the trees, it’s dark by four o’clock and there are crumpets for tea, it’s winter now. So there.