I am one of those grumps who absolutely loves winter — dark evenings, black twiggy trees against a watery sky, all the taps and door handles almost too cold to the touch, love it. Keep your summers. If there’s another 40°C heatwave this year I will actually just stop existing. So it follows that I’ve always had a bit of a thing for hygge. And when I got chatting to someone Danish a little while ago, of course I asked her about it, expecting stories of the legendary polar night, scarcely seeing the sun between October and March, going about your day in pitch blackness, the northern lights. (There’s a chance I’ve got my geography a bit skewed here.) “It’s not different from the UK, really?” she said, nonplussed. “I’m not sure why we make such a fuss about it, to be honest.” Well, maybe because “hygge” sounds all sophisticated and lifestyle-blog-ish whereas the English equivalent — sighing contentedly and going “ah, that’ll do” — doesn’t quite have the same ring? But is there a particularly English twist to hygge out there? Should we be making more of a fuss of it? I think we should, and I’ve spent 2024 so far trying to do exactly that. Herewith my findings. January takes a fair old beating from us every year, for the weather, the ubiquitous diet food, the passive righteous pressure to forgo alcohol — for generally, it seems, just not being Christmas. Fair. But an English January comes into its own with regards to TV. Now, Denmark might have its Nordic noir series with all their icy atmospheres and high drama, but can they hold a candle to the overblown-but-nonetheless-excellent duplicity of The Traitors? To the cringe-until-you’re-inside-out spectacle of an entrepreneur singing at a bus full of reluctant tourists or trying to flog an absolutely inedible artisan cheesestring to the head of M&S on The Apprentice? Hardly. Terrestrial January TV is the ultimate in English hygge. The Danes, and I think much of continental Europe in general, do cafes really well. We long since started to copy them, with exposed warm-white light bulbs and wooden banquettes and everything made with cardamom and cinnamon. Now, I love Ole & Steen and the like as much as the next person, but for English hygge purposes? No, we must look closer to home. I present for your consideration: The Understated English Cafe. Unbeatable, solidly predictable. TEUC is normally found at National Trust or English Heritage locations, or garden centres. It will be slightly overheated, and there will be at most one gluten-free option. The trendiest thing on the (probably laminated) menu will be Fentiman’s lemonade, the cutlery will be wrapped in paper napkins, and everything will come with a tiny salad and about five crisps in a little ramekin. There will be a lot of jacket potato options, and if you order a toasted teacake, it will be the best one you’ve ever had in your life. Absolutely NO tiered cake stands or matcha. Banana bread can stay but it’s on thin ice. Similarly -- the Danes have gløgg, of course, mulled wine, and so do we, but only until December. Much as I’d support year-round hot sugary Malbec, I feel the more obvious option open to us is tea. It has to be, doesn’t it? But there’s tea and tea, and I don’t think Darjeeling in bone china has much hygge-ness about it. It’s a fact that tea drunk out of a chunky mug (ideally one that you don’t know the provenance of but appears to have come free with Easter eggs or to be celebrating one of the Queen’s jubilees) tastes 90% better than out of any other vessel. I haven’t done any real scientific research to support this but all tea drinkers know it to be true. It’s also a fact that tea tastes 100% better if it’s Yorkshire tea. No research needed. There are more, unendingly more! Slightly rubbish village fairs in church halls; Classic FM; stepping into a steamy Gregg’s from a cold street and ordering while your pockets are bulging with your gloves; pudding and custard; the Antiques Roadshow credits; library phone boxes spilling over from the post-Christmas clear-out. So many charming, hygge-ish little moments that will brighten our winters, if we let them. Robert Browning didn’t write “Oh to be in England / Now that January’s there” but maybe he should have. To be fair, though, he’d never seen The Traitors.
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(Header Photo: Radcliffe Camera, Oxford - Isabel Parkinson 2016)
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