“There is something depressing about a mild winter. Frosts in the Berkshire countryside have been late this year and gone by lunchtime. Unless something changes soon, the brazen, early growth of trees and flowers will actually be perfectly all right and spring will be here before we know it. The absence of a true season is unsettling to a psychological clock set by weeks of biting frost and bare branches. In my childhood winters, we had to spend half an hour defrosting our toes after morning outings. What is the point of a roaring fire or a hot water bottle now, when the worst natural hazard of the morning is an unusually big puddle?” (Juliet Samuel in The Daily Telegraph)

My take:   Get used to it.  It gets warmer and warmer from now on, accompanied by floods and massive rainfalls. But you can always buy a canoe or blame the change of seasons on the EU.

Strange, though, that the writer comments in the pages of the Daily Telegraph, one of several publications that cater to elderly climate change deniers and wistful supporters of the restoration of the British Empire.  Free of Brussels (I thought) snowflakes on kittens and warm woolen mittens would once again be the order of the winter day, and everything would return to how it was when we were young. Or that is what we were told.   Never mind, very soon Brits will have brand new passports with blue, instead of red, covers.  So that is something to look forward to.

(Note to the literal-minded: the above is written tongue in cheek).