Winter has most definitely not come unnoticed. The temperature has risen a bit though and the ground is wet rather than frozen, rain rather than snow flurries, damp not ice. It presents its own challenges living within this, especially with kids and dogs but also in that I’m outdoors three days a week at the moment. Getting a fire lit in these conditions is hard, much harder and the pupils already find sticking with anything longer than ten seconds challenging.
It’s a good lesson in not getting everything instantly though. These things are important, especially nowadays and I wonder if my parents or grandparents thought that about us. Maybe they said ‘they’ve got it easy’ whereas we say ‘they’ve got to have it instantly’. It’s a massive societal problem though for adults too, don’t think I’m just blaming children for it. Things like lighting fires in the cold or jiu-jitsu, or skateboarding, where it takes years to get to any kind of level of decent are great to build resilience and is against those very modern ideas of instant gratification, everything happening now and being good at something first time, straight away, getting it now, for no fire lights on the first strike (unless you’re Lemmy lighting a Marlboro) and no belt is given on the first class.