The end of October and it's all change on the weather front.

The end of October and it's all change on the weather front.

So here we are again rapidly heading towards the end of October and you'll never guess who's back for yet another season. The heavenly heat that made its star studded appearance on British shores during this summer has sadly departed and could well be on its way back to a city, town or seaside near you next April and May.

Now though, there is an air of reluctant farewell to summer before Halloween does its utmost to haunt us all. The weather has about it  that sad resignation to its inevitable fate that almost breaks your heart. This morning there were those swift, beefy showers that hung around for a while before dropping a hearty sprinkling of rain. It must have  undoubtedly met with the unanimous approval of British farmers across the country.

But that old chestnut of the British climate has to be mentioned again because none of us could possibly survive without at least a whole news broadcast of those warm isobars or those cold fronts from the Atlantic which threaten to dominate our everyday lives whether we like it or not. There is  a real sense that a biting chill has set in with a vengeance, a foreboding that a severe winter may well be just around the corner.

It's at times like this that those in the Southern half of England always seem to get a kind of advanced warning of winter's colder excesses with mini gusts of wind, spasmodic gale force winds, torrents of rain that sweep and slant across our faces with a cautionary blast before it really turns treacherous, gloomy and extremely dangerous in December and January.

Of course more sympathetic souls will always feel sorry for the poor Scots where high up in the Grampian hills and the heather clad Highlands the weather is rather like some unwelcome and nasty burglar who keeps trying to break in and invariably steals valuable jewellery. Scotland becomes an almost unwitting victim of its own geographical position because at some point the rain and snow will arrive much sooner than it does down South. Which seems highly unfair.

But slowly the blameless, cobalt blue skies of summer are receding into some dark and cosy corner of our living rooms, thickening dark clouds conniving and conspiring behind our backs, waiting patiently for the right moment to pounce. Earlier a gang of chocolate coloured clouds crept up unobtrusively over Manor House in a concerted attempt to sabotage all of our best laid plans.

At the moment the evening has kept a low profile. There is a quiet stillness about North London, a peaceful lull before what could be considered as a forthright storm. The weather here is showing a languid indifference to everything around us. It simply can't make up its mind whether to chuck it down with incessant rain for the rest of the year or just hold fire for a while. Everybody is preparing themselves for the weekend with temperatures dropping like the proverbial stone and pullovers by the ready.

Tomorrow night the clocks go back an hour to signify the end of British summertime and the nation's body clocks ready for themselves for an extra hour in bed. At times like this some of us begin to resign ourselves to the fact that by 3pm daylight has effectively ended, it's time for a mug of hot cocoa and an early night. We may know that it's still daytime but there can be few of us who look forward to those early evening tea times when it feels as though you should in fact be turning over to sleep.

Winter is about to make its official announcement and the country is about to brace itself for those meanderingly long winter evenings when the roaring log fires and central heating systems of our winter's existence send the warmest of invitations to our neighbourhood and we all get very cosy. Suddenly the darker complexions of the seasons make themselves all too apparent, fleeting rain squalls which once tapped softly and gently against tightly secure windows now proper statements of intent.

The stark contrasts that the seasons inevitably bring every year are never more clearly highlighted than they have been this year. None of us saw that delightful summer coming and for the first time in many years we can look back at a summer that was determined to imitate the seemingly endless sunshine of 1976 when every day seemed like one eternal dream that we couldn't quite believe.

Still it's time to close the shutters on those powerful sun beams of May, June, July and August and hunker down in our dining rooms, only occasionally glancing out of the window at those comforting amber beams of light from glowing streets and silent back roads. Here, suburbia slumbers and sniffles with a thousand handkerchiefs on its sturdy coffee tables. Then we sprawl out on spacious sofas and settees as the table begins to groan under the burden of  more and more magazines, newspapers, books and all kinds of vital necessities such as the TV remote control.

Winter is that very specific time where we begin to feel the rest of society has almost shut down, that rather like the hedgehog hibernation is our only source of comfort. We huddle around the TV, dig into our extensive selection of Netflix films and then find ourselves spoilt for choice for alternative things to do rather than stare spellbound into that flickering, flashing instrument of fun and entertainment that seems to have been around for thousands of centuries.

Then one member of the family turns to their Tablet or I-Pad just to make sure that they've successfully expanded their number of friends on Facebook. Then one of the children or one of their school friends will suddenly admit to having accidentally tweeted Donald Trump at which point somebody will mention Jeremy Corbyn and an aching silence will descend on 25 Acacia Avenue.

Now that all the politicians have gone back to work after what seemed an interminable summer recess Theresa May, the British Prime Minister, Jeremy Corbyn allegedly the most hated man in the whole wide world and Vince Cable perhaps the most anonymous man in the world are doing their utmost to collectively engage us in quite the monumentally boring subject British politics has ever known.

Now that winter is about to make a perennial visit to British shores the temperature in the House of Commons and Lords may well fall to its lowest point. Some of us are beginning to climb the walls with utter exasperation, cursing the day David Cameron let slip the imminent day of the EU referendum and wondering if we can possibly hurl as many vulgar expletives at our TV screens as possible.

These could well be some of the coldest and bleakest days of our lives if we continue to allow those sharp tongued representatives on behalf of our so called democracy to batter our heads with more and more variations on Brexit. Oh to be in Britain now that a winter is here and Brexit continues to break all conceivable records for the lengthy bouts of tedium it seems hell bent on subjecting us to all.

You almost feel tempted to summon the services of Michael Palin and the Monty Python team. If only some of us could avail ourselves of that wet fish which was cruelly slapped across the face of Palin by a London lock, sending him flying into the water. With the pantomime season not that far distant this could be the time to tell our noble members of Parliament to take their Brexit grievances well away from the public's disillusioned ears and just boo, hiss, sneer and snarl.

So with a day to go before we all adjust our clocks and watches and the world spins around quite chaotically at times this has to be the time to get used to those limited hours of daylight and try to cram in as much as we can. We may find that all those hours spent gazing out in misty, dark evenings could have a beneficial effect on us without ever realising it at the time.

You see Saturday tea time can only mean one thing. Yes folks, it's that time of the week when we all congregate around the TV and lose ourselves in Strictly Come Dancing. Here is one of the most polished, most utterly engaging and glamorous of early Saturday evening telly programmes. Strictly is terrific fun, side splittingly funny, never remotely dull and outrageously invigorating to the soul.

During the winter months that will now stretch in front of us, the sequins, the glitter, the dresses and those wildly unbelievable clothes will make us long for more of the same every week. As the people of the world pull up their coat collars against the strengthening, blustery winds and winter keeps knocking remorselessly against our ever resilient rooftops, Strictly Come Dancing removes us from a  season that always feels like some ceaseless motorway tunnel from which there would appear to be no escape. Still we've always got Strictly Come Dancing and what about that hot tomato soup we've been promising ourselves for a couple of weeks? Whatever you do, don't forget the crusty bread. That's a must.