We have been fighting with Fall, and we are losing.

Somehow, at some point in our past, J & I set ourselves an unspoken goal: if we can make it through September without the furnace, we will have triumphed; we will have won.

Each day the interior temperature of our small home drops a degree or so. Last Sunday it was 68; two days ago it was 64. This morning J says from the thermostat with stoic glee “62! 62!” (all in Fahrenheit, of course: our thermostat is still stubbornly Imperial: maintaining a British stiff upper lip throughout this foolishness…)

We add layers of clothing, don thicker socks. We change bedsheets: gone is the “Summer” cotton set, the lighter coverlet. We huddle nightly now beneath the “intermediate” sheets and the down duvet (a final, winter-flannel stage has been held in reserve…

The hot-water bottle has been excavated from beneath the bathroom sink, its warm red-rubber surface pulls both pairs of feet to it like a magnet. We cinch the covers beneath our chins, migrate to the middle of the bed like colliding continents. Icy hands and feet become inadvertent weapons, shocking the recipient into wide-eyed wakefulness just as sleep is seeping in.

If we make it to October we can claim victory. There is no prize, of course: just the sense that we will have (perhaps perversely) perservered. And we can then can go gentle in those good winter nights, the furnace thundering loudly as it chuffs warmth from all the vents into every chilly corner of the house…