Party on, Garth

Uh oh. Say goodbye to charming, happy-go-lucky Garth George, at least for four months or so. Say hello to the Winter Garth:

It's started early this year. I am not a winter person and already my mindset has taken on the same leaden colour as the sky.

To be honest, I find it difficult to spot the change:

I hate winter. I loathe the cold. I detest the wind and the rain. I have to force myself to get up every morning, abhor having to take my constitutional before the sun is properly up, and resent having to pull the curtains late in the afternoon to keep the heat in.

Seems like relatively standard moaning to me. Of course, it doesn't take long for him to translate this into an attack on the 'liberal elite's' scientific consensus:

Climate change? For sure. Global warming? Maybe, but if so, it's happening somewhere else.

Forget anthropogenic global warming; any global warming is a myth. I know this because it's colder in May than in January. But perhaps that's being uncharitable; the rest of the piece is pretty anodyne, another misty-eyed recollection of his upbringing in Invercargill, and how he doesn't like to go out at night. It's only notable for a return to the wholesale use of quotes that we last saw in his piece about the national cycleway (remember that old thing?). At the time, a fellow blogger and EtH reader discovered that, by googling "cycling quotes" and clicking on the first result, you could find a page with all but one of the heartfelt quotes that Garth recalled in his column. If you're looking for wisdom in bite-sized, internet-friendly chunks, you're in luck:

Which reminds me of a German proverb I came across once, which says: "Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat."

[...] "Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen," wrote Willa Cather, an American author.

[...] There is a Japanese proverb which we all might well take particular note of which says: "One kind word can warm three winter months."

[...] And the words that might bring hope to the faces of even the coldest of us come from American businessman, author and motivator Bo Bennet, who said: "As sure as the spring will follow the winter, prosperity and economic growth will follow recession."

[...] These days, however, as I live my 69th year, I identify with Mark Twain, who wrote: "[Winter] is a time when one's spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death."

Well, that's one way to pad out a column. *Ahem*

Anyway, it seems like we had better get used to glum Garth for a few months. Nonetheless, he will remain one of the few things to look forward to over these barren months; not so much the light at the end of the tunnel as the lights in the tunnel roof that stop you crashing into the walls. In that spirit, here's a quote I found on the internet by some English playwright or other:

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this son of Invercargill