11.30.03

crunch crunch crunch silence

Posted in Dreaming of England at 1:30 am by

Winter is coming.

If only winter in London was a little more like this, and a little less like, well, nothing in particular. The British Isles, with their freakishly temperate climes, manage to be chilly and damp, but in a vague way. It is rarely properly cold in the south, but it almost always fails to be warm. I remember my old geography teaching alleging that Britain has no climate; it only has weather.

And, by and large, that weather is limp and washed out.

That said, it’s been raining a great deal recently. Last Sunday’s weekly football was conducted in a wind-whipped rainstorm, the looming cloud cover spouting bathtub after bathtub onto the grass. It was both miserably foul and curiously exhilarating. Once we were running, the trickling clamminess of my top seemed less chilling. At the same time, my legs either warmed up or went completely numb, blocking out the pain.

I was irresistibly reminded of school sports, standing shivering on the rugby field at three quarter while the games master attempted to explain precisely why he’d blown up for yet another foul (knock on, handling in a ruck, offside, coming in from the side; plenty to choose from). At least this was preferable to tackling practice, always performed on the muddiest patch in the field.

Of all the things I thought I might end up repeating from my schooldays, I never thought it would be this.

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