This is not a blog about Game of Thrones. It might surprise you to learn that I’ve not watched the series really. Read the books and loved them, but not watched the series. Anyway, this is not about either the series or the books. This is about the stark reminder that in fact winter is coming.

This whole week, I’ve felt it. The days drawing in. Less morning. Less evening. And with that comes the corresponding drop in energy levels. I find it hard to get up in the morning, I want to go to bed earlier in the evening, and where a five hour sleep was enough in the summer, as winter comes on, it draws out into six, seven, eight hours.

I notice it most in the mornings. My body functions alongside the sun, and when the sun is up early, I follow. The streetlamps are still on outside, and it’s about 6.20. After the summer, that feels like the sun’s not trying hard enough.

In another sense, however, it is still summer. We’ve still got the long days, only broken occasionally by autumn showers. It still feels like summer coming home from work, other than my worrying habit of falling asleep on the train. One of these days, I’m going to wake up on the train back to Glenrothes, wondering why nobody woke me up…

I hate mornings. I remember Silk, the Drasnian in David Eddings’ Belgariad, once said something that greatly resonated with me. “The only thing mornings exist for is to keep night time and lunchtime from bumping into each other.” I hold that turn of phrase close in my heart, particularly from now through until next April.

Getting up while the sky is still dark is a strain, even more so when you’re going to bed in the dark too. It’s the curse of living in a colder climate. The further south I move, the less the problem affects me, but further south, the summer heat kills me. Seems I need to become a migratory bird, and fly south for the winter. I’m certainly feeling the urge.

Winter is always a tricky subject. Some of the worst parts of my life have happened in Winter, or on the threshhold between Winter and Summer. My moods deteriorate. I neeeed my cups of tea – that constant neural boost of caffeine that during the summer I can take or leave. It was Winter that first drove me to coffee.

What with everything nowadays, however, I’m not worried about the winter. I hate it, sure, but I’m not feeling the sinking sense of dread I once felt as the long nights crept into my bones. Winter is coming, sure. But hot on its heels will come a new spring, a new summer, and a whole new year.

After all, time flies like an apple. And if you’re interested, fruit flies like a banana.

Good Morning.