Changing seasons heralds unwelcome Game of Groans
‘Winter is coming’ is an oft-used phrase in the TV series Game of Thrones as both a portent of doom and an observation on the changing weather.
It foretells, among other catastrophes, the arrival of the White Walkers and their undead army. It also reminds those in Castle Black to turn the thermostat up a few degrees.
The influential character Jon Snow is often seen telling his acolytes, while staring moodily into the middle distance: ‘Eeeh, it’s a bit nippy isn’t it?’ while hastily buttoning up his Parka.
Followers of this classic TV show may be able to pick holes in my Game of Thrones knowledge, but then I haven’t watched it. The ‘Winter is coming’ phrase has, however, caught on.
It’s being used regularly in our house.
The weekend’s march on London by the Unite the Kingdom flag wavers was one such development that sparked the ‘Winter is coming’ debate (it comes in the portent of doom category, in case you didn’t guess).
Thankfully, the march seemed to do its job without too much fuss. Who’d have thought draping yourself in a flag, urinating in the street and fighting police could be such an effective way of bringing the nation together.
Gathering in our most multicultural city to hear warnings about the dangers of multiculturalism - delivered, ironically, by foreigners and criminals - certainly got me worried. Though not as worried as maths teachers must be.
The experts in the field of number-crunching tell us that there were 150,000 people on the march, but the marchers told us it was three million. Guess it’s easier to tell from a spot in the middle of a crowd after ten pints of Churchills, than using the evidence of your eyes from drone footage and area-density mapping formulas, but then what do I know? Or care, for that matter.
I was too busy erecting a plastic storage container to house the bags of firewood and smokeless fuel that are to see us through the winter that is coming.
And the container, wood and coal all arrived on the same day. The instructions said it would take two people 25 minutes to assemble the container. The weather app said it would rain in, oh, about 30 minutes. One was an overestimation, the other way under. You can guess which was which (sigh).
While the words ‘Winter is coming’ are loaded with meaning, perhaps the most apt image to sum up this phrase is not Jon Snow wistfully gazing at gathering storm clouds, but a middle-aged man with a screwdriver between his teeth sat amid a pile of wood, coal and plastic storage container parts trying to read a rain-sodden instruction leaflet as a howling gale and rainstorm ensues. Now that really does scream: ‘Winter is coming.’