Every year in North Queensland there’s a week around the start of August when winter seems to end. The mornings are hot and still, the sun has bite again, the nights are balmy, the winter flowers no longer give off their jasminey smell. In Mission Beach, we peek our heads out from our nest of blankets and empty cacao cups, see spring leaping up, and realise we’re not quite ready to finish winter.

Gratefully, winter always comes back for a last hurrah that feels like a celebration because we know it’s a goodbye. Next week is due to be our chilliest week of the year. We will be wringing every single drop of cosy out of it that we can.

In Australia we have a tendency to undervalue winter. We all seem to have built our houses with the goal of pretending that winter never comes. We rattle and shiver from June to September, live three months in a state of denial, then leap into spring as though it was all just a disturbing dream.

Denial of winter is also a modern disease. We want to be rushing always, achieving constantly, ever stimulated, forever in bright light. We have a fear of dark nights, days of rest, listless, dreary weeks waiting for inspiration.

A lot of our work at Soma is creative, and we have learned that creativity has seasons. In order for something new to come to the surface, old energies have to first sink in. Rest is not wasted time; it is nourishment for emerging things. If you spend all your time on the surface, you produce algae. If you can withstand the tired days, the rootwork beneath the ground, then you earn the flowers that bud.

Knut Hamsun, Alistair’s favourite author, grew up above the Arctic circle in Norway. He described summer there as a dream without sleeping and winter as a dreamless sleep. He wrote about the sound of the first robin singing in April, after months of darkness, snow, and silence. Our sense at Soma is that you have to earn that first robin song of spring by enduring the long nights of winter - you can’t swan in at the finish line, because then it’s just another bird singing. Winter brings spring into focus. Winter gives clarity to our dreams.

We hope, as the mornings grow earlier and the nights warmer, that you’re sucking the last drops of nourishment out of winter this year. We hope you’re warming your hands and your heart with little cups of Soma. Spring will be here soon enough - for now, let’s put our feet by the heater, and toast the cosy joys of winter.