WAS it really only 48 hours ago that I was sitting on a beach in Cyprus, wringing the last bit of sun out of my late, late bargain break to the Med, and thinking: "This is the warmest I'll feel in the open air for the next six months"?

It feels more like 48 years.

Maybe it was the depressing drizzle that greeted me as I stepped out of the airport and into a night as gloomy as only Manchester in November can be.

Or maybe it was the bone-aching chill that descended on my home over the week that I was away, and that left me needing two duvets before my nose turned back from blue to pink on my first night back in Blighty.

Certainly, the fact that the clocks went back while we were abroad made it feel as though we went away in autumn and came back in fully-fledged winter.

And to be honest, holiday or no holiday, this is the time of year that I generally start working out, not the remaining shopping days to Christmas, but the amount of miserable winter that remains until we finally claw our way through to April.

How I hate those disgustingly cheerful individuals who rub their hands together at the prospect of a long, hard winter while I am rubbing mine in the vain hope of getting some life back into my frozen fingertips.

I'd willingly trade in any amount of crisp blue mornings and Jack Frost patterns on glass for the simple pleasure of getting into a car without having my skin stick to the metal.

I can fully understand the longing every parent must feel to build their first snowman for their wide-eyed kiddies as they see snow for the first time.

And I'd be right out there with them if they could only come up with some decent warm snow.

Apart from anything else, it's all the blasted clothes you have to wear. In summertime you can just sling on some shoes and you're ready to go; in winter it's a minimum extra load of cardie, brolly, thick socks, tights, wellies, thick coat, hat, gloves and scarf.

Not only does it to take an age to dress yourself; you can hardly move for all the layers, you alternately freeze and boil while out shopping, and if you go out looking for a slinky Christmas party number, you end up so hot and bothered taking all your kit off and putting in back on again that those retro-Goth bondage culottes start to look good with that lurex butterfly top.

If you should ever brave the arctic blast to go out to the pub, you spend half the evening finding a cranny in which to wedge your gear, and the rest of the night worrying that it will end up drenched in someone else's beer.

And when you finally leave for home, you can be sure you will drop at least one glove and a brolly when you scoop up all your belongings and stomp off into the night.

Ungritted pavements that leave you feeling 80 years old when you mince the 50 yards to the corner shop; filthy slush churned up by motorists to ruin your new wool suit; floods, road closures and four hours of twilight calling itself the daytime; and weirdoes who actually seem to enjoy all the above.

All good reasons to emigrate or hibernate.

Ah, well. Only 131 shivering days to go.

Updated: 09:59 Wednesday, November 10, 2004