{"id":5050,"date":"2014-09-07T07:00:57","date_gmt":"2014-09-07T06:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=5050"},"modified":"2014-09-07T07:00:57","modified_gmt":"2014-09-07T06:00:57","slug":"a-lovehate-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=5050","title":{"rendered":"A love\/hate thing…"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"As<\/a>
As Ned Stark would say – Winter is Coming. A good excuse to use this fab image of Sean Bean looking noble and dependable and hot.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

I woke up the other morning \u2013 and saw a few leaves falling from the tree in my back garden. It was also a tad chilly. Not cold \u2013 just chilly. A harbinger of things to come.<\/p>\n

As George R R Martin wrote :\u00a0Winter is Coming.<\/p>\n

I was born and raised in a hot country. I live in a much colder one. I was totally fascinated the first time it snowed. I was totally p\u2026.ed off the first time snow interfered with my plans.<\/p>\n

So here it is \u2013 an Aussie\u2019s love\/hate relationship with the English winter.<\/p>\n

Five things I love about winter:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Snow<\/strong><\/p>\n

Seeing snow for the first time as an adult was amazing. I went down to Salisbury plain and visited Stonehenge. There was no one there. The stones looked amazing rising up out of the pristine whiteness, that was marred only by the tracks of a fox and a rabbit.<\/p>\n

I still have never built a snowman \u2013 but I have had snowball fights.<\/p>\n

\"jg-snowball\"<\/a>
My very first snowball – on Salisbury Plain.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Central heating<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I first came to the UK, central heating was a strange and wondrous thing to me. I\u2019d never seen it before. We didn\u2019t have much need for it I Australia. I love lying in bed and hearing the central heating ticking before I get up in the morning \u2013 knowing the house is warming up with every second that passes.<\/p>\n

And I love coming inside after being out in the cold weather, and feeling the lovely warmth fold around me.<\/p>\n

Knitting and bulky jumpers<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love to knit. Yes \u2013 you can knit in summer and I do, but I have to stick with thin cotton yarns. It\u2019s too hot to be working heavy yarn. In winter, I get to play with the lovely thick wool \u2013 which is not only fun to knit, it also grows very quickly so it doesn\u2019t take long to see some result from my hard work.<\/p>\n

I love wearing big bulky jumpers too \u2013 they are so snuggly!<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A (small) part of my yarn stash. Some of this will get knitted up this winter.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Stodgy food<\/strong><\/p>\n

Toad in the Hole! I had never eaten toad until I came to the UK. Never even heard of it. I love it. English sausages are SO GOOD! So much better than Aussie sausages.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d heard of Haggis but never eaten that either. Both are wonderful on cold winter night \u2013 perhaps with a glass of warm mulled wine (another delight I discovered in England).<\/p>\n

Curling up with a book because it\u2019s too cold to go outside.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have to explain that to you, do I? You\u2019re reading an author\u2019s blog. You know that a good book is the best way to spend a cold rainy afternoon.<\/p>\n

To counter that \u2013 here are five things I hate about winter:<\/p>\n

Snow<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s cold and it\u2019s wet. It\u2019s also very inconvenient. I don\u2019t like driving in the snow. I have little experience of it, and am not sure whether or not I\u2019m a danger to myself and other road users.<\/p>\n

\"That<\/a>
That same trip to Salisbury Plain – enough said!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Central heating<\/strong><\/p>\n

Being a bit of a hot-house flower (as it were) I tend to keep the central heating set very high. It\u2019s expensive. And it make the air very dry. I hate it even more when it fails.<\/p>\n

But most of all, I hate that I have wet clothes draped around near the heaters to dry. I love my husband, but his socks are not a decorative feature.<\/p>\n

Knitting and bulky jumpers<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bulky jumpers make me look like the Michelin man!<\/p>\n

Stodgey food<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s fattening – (see Michelin man comment above)<\/p>\n

Curling up with a book because it\u2019s too cold to go outside.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Much as I love reading, the really short days, with little sunshine do get me down. In Australia, in winter, the days are longer and the sun still shines. I have been known to get a bit of cabin fever in the long dull evenings.<\/p>\n

But sometimes – I do enjoy a walk in the cold -just as long as there is warmth waiting when I get home.<\/p>\n

It’s like so many other things – if you look for the bad things – you’ll find them. But if you look for the good things…..<\/p>\n

\"Ok<\/a>
Ok \u2013 gratuitous picture of Aragorn – but there is snow in the background \u2013 so that makes it one of the good things about winter – doesn’t it?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I woke up the other morning \u2013 and saw a few leaves falling from the tree in my back garden. It was also a tad chilly. Not cold \u2013 just chilly.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-travels","category-reading"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g6jm-1js","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5050\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}