If you enjoy the Hawk & Dove stories, and either like to re-read them or have not read the last of them — The Light of One Lamp — this is a good moment to read it, especially if you live in England.
That story begins in late November, where we are now. November varies a fair bit in the England, but is often mild until Bonfire Night on the 5th, and then the temperature drops. That's happened this year, and now we are waking up to gardens and shed roofs glistening from hard frost in the night, and very crystalline clear light.
The forecasters say we may be in for a cold winter. El Niño, as I understand it, doesn't directly affect us in England, but it's done something (Hebe told me when I saw her on Tuesday, but I've forgotten what) in Siberia that's made a plume of cold above the North Pole, that in turn will affect us because the world is round and what goes around comes around. So we're in a very frosty patch just now and may be in for a hard winter.
The Light of One Lamp starts on a clear, bright morning in late November, with sparkling white frost overlaying everything — exactly the kind of morning it is today, seven hundred years later.
There's a lot of weather in my stories, because weather is highly variable in England and the extreme changes dominate a lot of what we choose to do and how we live and what we wear. It makes a difference all the time and it the subject of much of our conversation — a blessedly safe topic back in the days when we avoided talking about religion or politics or sex or how much money we had, and were reticent about anything personal.
So if you live in England just now, and are idly wondering whether to read The Light of One Lamp, it's a good moment, especially if you turn the central heating off. You will be right there on the North York Moors, thinking you'd better grab a hat and scarf and mittens, and an extra wooly layer, so you don't die of cold.
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