If you’ve been watching the calendar as closely as I have, you perhaps will already have noticed that we’ve passed the halfway mark of winter. Of course anyone who lives here, or further south, knows that is absolute bollocks. The weather doesn’t significantly improve until October. In my head, I think of winter as ‘the first – and worst – but not the last of the cold’.
Sickness has hit us this season more than it generally does; Keira has been struck down again by another virus. She came down with it on Saturday, a day I had been booked into attend a quick photography workshop. (Remember, it’s on my living list: ‘Learn to take great photos’.) I picked up some tips about ISO and shutter speed and aperture, but as soon as I stepped through the door at home again, back into the chaos, most of them left me. These pictures you see are the ones I went outside and took in between mopping brows with wet washers. They were taken in ‘P’ setting (I long to get off ‘Auto’, or at least know how to do so), and are the best of the bunch, straight out of the camera, so you can see I’m not going to be winning any photography awards soon. But that’s okay, the point was to get more experience.
I don’t feel ‘experienced’ in winter, though. As Sinclair Lewis said, it’s more like an occupation, something to be endured. At least, it’s how I tend to feel. You’d think I’d be used to Melbourne winters after experiencing thirteen of them. Thirteen years in a job, many people will have earned decent long service leave. Too bad we can’t pack up and go to Cairns for a while (well, some of us can, I guess!)
This post isn’t to whinge – well, okay, maybe a tiny bit – but to observe, be honest. Because the sun managed a tiny bit of warmth yesterday. The azaleas are looking healthy and my weeping cherry is back in bloom. We have a new back door that was fitted properly (unlike the one originally built one, that was kind of shoved in the hole and decided ‘that’ll do’), so the house might be able to hold its heat for a change. It’s my aim too: I might be quieter, more reserved. I need to hold my heat. My back still isn’t back to normal. I have things coming up, commitments. It’s not dormancy – I like to think of it as selectivity.
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Post title quote by Sinclair Lewis
