With all due respect to T.S. Eliot, I think November wins the prize. Setting the clocks back is brutal, the weather is tough, and the days continue to get shorter. Getting some disappointing news in the middle of the month didn’t help. With December at least the days start getting longer towards the end, and there are the holidays. January and February the end is in sight. I don’t mind a proper winter; it’s this damp and dreary stuff I find hard.

This is the first time I’ve actually spent a November in York. We bought this place in October 2007, but I went to New York for three months almost immediately. The next year I was in Singapore; we then lived in London for just over a year; and last year I was in Seattle. I’ve spent at least part of every other month of the year here, but this is the first November. And it will be the last. Sometime over the Christmas/New Year period we’re moving back to County Durham.