I'm finding this a very grey time of year. My motivation to write is slumping and my motivation to curl up in front of a fire and read is increasing. The clouds came to Yorkshire a few days back, and they don't want to go again. Yorkshire has a reputation for being a cold, damp place. My family used to come up here for Summer holidays way back. At least half the time it rained. Well, Steph and I haven't spent a winter up here yet, but I have my suspicions that grey may be the theme.

Our house stands on a windy ridge above Leeds, and the grey theme up there may well be matched by a damp, cold theme.

I'm not really a winter person. I have heard rumours that winters can be great, full of crisp, clean snow and so forth, but I've yet to see the evidence of that. It can be wonderful, in short bursts, preferably of a day or so here and there: I've always like woodlands in winter, with the low, pale sun behind the stark trees and the distant smell of wood smoke. But that type of weather seems a rarity. More often its muddy and wet.

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This isn't being a very cheery journal entry so far. I think I'm in need of a holiday to perk me up. Steph and I are going to Michigan for Christmas, which will be great, but it still seems a long way off. At heart, I still think like a student, although I stopped being one in 1996. I still believe in the long vacations, unsullied by work or responsibility. I can't even really complain about the lack of holiday. Working for a University, I get 5 weeks a year. Maybe I just need to take some of that holiday sometime.

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I've been told, on occassion, by a few Americans reading my stories that "grey" is a name not a colour. I'd just like to make it clear that it's a colour over here. It's just a particularly British colour, a dour, reserved colour that I'm sure is suitably different from the more outgoing, forthright American colour. It suits me, at least in this season.