My life as a newt

The most common reaction of our new friends, upon learning that we have moved FROM Australia to live in England is...."WHY?!!" Expensive and generous television airtime is devoted to programs outlining ways to move TO Australia; images of sunny beaches, hot weather, sun-kissed complexions on minimally dressed persons enjoying beer and bbqs, fascinating wildlife designed to withstand hot dry conditions, and oh, did I mention the sun?...You'd think that every Brit was somehow deprived of essential sunlight, somehow long-term subterranean creatures in a land of grey and damp...

Well, I, Alex Grey, LOVE it.

As each day passes I realise more and more that I am attracted to the gloom, the bitter, the melancholy. My ardour for the bleak is reflected in my attraction to gustavian grey colour schemes of the paint charts, the choice of holidaying in the Outer Hebrides and Scottish Highlands in WINTER, my bookshelves which capture the lives, fictional and real, of heroes wuthering on the heights and tramping the moors. The explorers of the warm Pacific hold no interest for me-it's the lives of Oates, Scott, Shackleton, Franklin and Parry who grab my attention. Not only valiant were they in venturing across the ant/arctic in desperation to win either an unwinnable race or fleeting honour, but my goodness they were English gentlemen! When the corpses of Franklin's officers and crew were discovered, miles from their ships, the men were found to have left behind their guns (necessary for food) but to have lugged such essentials as monogrammed silver cutlery, a backgammon board, a clothes brush and a copy of The Vicar of Wakefield (presumably to be read as they polished their uniform buttons with the tin of polish also accompanying them). Incompetant? Yes. Bungling? Yes. British? Definitely!

So my love affair with Bleak is well-founded. I hibernate not in the winter but am...(wait for it) "aestivate", like a salamander, a newt*. I slow down and conserve energy when the sun is out, but wait for the temperature to drop and all humanity to run grumbling and moaning inside to their safe centrally-heated homes and I
e-m-e-r-g-e.

* How convenient that we live beside the North Hampshire protected reserve of the Great Crested Newt...