Cuffing Season? Get a Grip.
Why winter is a terrible time to put your life on hold.
The first serious sign of winter is not the thermostat. It is the moment somebody in your group chat announces they are “just having a cosy one tonight”, then repeats it every Tuesday until Easter. Pub gardens empty, daylight becomes something you briefly see through the office window, and suddenly the national plan is to sit under a blanket until somebody puts the clocks forward. When I was single, this was cuffing season. The theory was that you found somebody for the winter, pulled a duvet over the both of you and emerged, blinking, when the daffodils returned. It always made me laugh because it sounded less like romance and more like central heating. Find a person, turn down the lights, watch six series of something neither of you has chosen, then decide in April that you are both suddenly very busy. That is a dreadful use of half a year. Winter has plenty going for it Summer is brilliant. Give me a pub garden, a picnic, an evening walk in shorts and a T-shirt with no destination, and I will be perfectly happy. Nobody is claiming that a soggy Wednesday in November beats it. Yet winter is not the unloved redheaded stepchild of the annual family. It has different pleasures, and most of them get much better once you stop expecting it to act like July. Being inside with a crowd while it is freezing outdoors makes an evening feel more communal. A comedy night lands differently when everyone has arrived damp around the edges and relieved to be somewhere warm. A gig is better still: you spend two hours jumping about, getting far too hot, then spill out into crisp night air with your ears ringing and a stupid smile on your face. An evening out is much better when the cold is waiting outside. Photo: APK / Wikimedia Commons Pub quizzes beside a roaring fire are bloody glorious. So are late museum openings, small cinemas, bowling, indoor food markets and the weird little local event you would never consider in July because somebody has bought a paddling pool. Winter gives places like that a chance to be the main event. Get outside anyway I first heard the old line about there being no bad weather, only the wrong clothing in a Billy Connolly gig, and it has stuck with me. There is a limit, obviously. If the Met Office is warning people not to travel, do not head for the coast because a blog told you to embrace the elements. But plenty of winter days are cold, dry and bright, which is exactly the weather for a long walk, a football match, a firework display, a light trail or standing somewhere dark enough to see the sky properly. A cold night can be the whole point. Photo: Cailin Grant-Jansen / Unsplash Make a little winter list Your 42 List does not have to be one enormous document full of every place you might visit before you die. Make a smaller list for the season. Call it Winter 2026/27, or Things That Will Stop Me Becoming a Human Duvet, or whatever works. Five things is enough: somewhere to hear live music, one thing that gets you outside, a pub quiz, a place you have never visited in your own town, and one plan with people you like that does not require a three-month WhatsApp poll. There are already good places to start: see a theatre show in the West End , attend a Prom , have a bonfire and stargaze , or try Nordic walking . If you have got a genuinely good winter idea, add it in the Community with #WinterCollection. We will pull together the best suggestions into a collection for everyone else who would rather do something memorable than spend the next six months waiting for beer-garden weather. By all means, have a blanket. Stay in sometimes. Find someone lovely to share the sofa with, if that is your thing. Just do not turn winter into a holding pattern. The blanket will still be there when you get back.