Go outside. Even if you see a flash of blue sky through the window, you'll find it isn't spring. Grim, cold, dark days lie ahead. Wrap up, chin up, and keep trudging: even Christmas shopping might not be the all-purpose therapy and seasonal tonic it once was.
This is the politics, just as it's the time of the year. Labour people who claim the Glenrothes byelection heralds sunnier times for the government are as daft as those looking out the shorts and sunglasses in November. The economic headlines have been dire for a year. House prices have been falling fast for months. But the actual experience of recession - the closures, job losses, lack of spending power and fear about the future - is only beginning to be felt. For the government, as for the rest of us, a big spending splurge to bring back cheer is simply not going to happen.
We will hear much talk of capital projects being brought forward, investment to protect the economy, Keynesian economics. From the Tories, meanwhile, we can expect new promises to cut taxes as they try to find an economic message people want to hear. Yet both can read the borrowing figures and know that extra spending or tax cuts simply pile up misery a few years down the line.
Austerity times are coming, and they cannot be evaded. Higher borrowing is needed, but mainly to pay the social security bills and to compensate for collapsing tax revenues. To assert that Glenrothes was voting Labour as a sign of gratitude and confidence is a little premature. More likely, it was a vote against the incumbents - the SNP.
Glib promises of tax cuts from David Cameron, and glib pledges to build more airports or roads with more borrowed money from Labour, will fail to move the public. They know what's going on. They can see shops closing, They know of friends and relatives being laid off. And if there is any read-across from the American experience, they are probably looking for leadership, not bribes.
One of the striking things about the Obama campaign was its pitch for hard times. It focused on sacrifice, albeit mainly from the unpopular rich, and the candidate made no attempt to downplay the problems he would face in office. One observer commented that since 9/11 Americans had been willing to sacrifice for their country, to roll up their sleeves and help - but had heard no call from George Bush. It was all overseas operations and a plea to keep shopping.
Barack Obama mobilised the young by saying something radically different. His was a campaign of volunteers, small donors and reawakened idealists. As British politicians scrabble to exploit what happened, most of their first responses diminish them. To claim Obama as your new best friend, to rush to stand in his reflected glory, is not dignified or plausible. No one in British politics is remotely like Obama. Brown, Cameron, Nick Clegg and the rest are going to have to do the best they can by being themselves. Yet the success of Obama's campaign does bring lessons, useful just so long as they are not tactic-mimicking, slogan-stealing ones.
There seems to be a hidden pattern in politics. Nine times out of 10 it's petty, disappointing business as usual. Everybody says they are sceptics, rather than cynics, and yet everybody feels cynical inside. Then, occasionally, someone comes along, or something happens, that unblocks a geyser of optimism. The first Blair election win was our last such moment. (In Scotland many felt the same when Alex Salmond won.) Under the crust of cynicism there is a bubbling layer of goodwill, waiting for its moment.
Tapping into that is the job of democratic politics. It is just possible that Cameron could do this. Not by offering tax cuts, but by sticking to his environmental policies - if they were right before the banking crisis, they're right now - and making more of volunteering. He had a good line on the need to put something back, for people to help their communities. It's been lost somewhere, but it is a strong message for austerity times. Cameron looks silly by drawing a parallel between himself and Obama: their backgrounds couldn't be more different. But a call for restraint, less greed and more community spirit might work for him and repair the damage caused by those hedge-fund chums.
Clegg has been looking at other messages of the Obama campaign, in particular the use of the internet - viral marketing, humour and small donations to create a broadbandwagon. He's right to think the public want a new syntax for politics, more relaxed and less stuffy. He is already looking at ways of using the teenagers' favourite internet site, YouTube, bubbling with videos, songs, idealism and laughter from the US campaign. As important, he wants the Lib Dems to focus on day-to-day concerns such as housing and heating bills. For a party struggling to be noticed at a time of recession, this seems shrewd.
So what about Brown and his new Blairite friends? Obama brings much better news in many areas. His Iraq plan should mean British troops coming home by the spring. They should not be marched off to Afghanistan. In the Middle East, the endlessly delayed peace process may be restarted. In general, a Labour government that has not sounded progressive on overseas matters since the departure of the late Robin Cook now has the chance for a serious rethink about priorities and attitudes.
Yet it is the domestic scene that will matter more. Brown and Alistair Darling, in power during the high-hog years, are losing nothing by confronting the banks. Glenrothes showed that voters are prepared to give another hearing to politicians who learn from their mistakes. They are perhaps more forgiving than newspapers. But they want straight talking.
So let us have an honest review of the past decade when investment was kept high, for good reasons but leaving limited options now. Was it "profligacy" to build modern, cleaner hospitals, to pay NHS staff decently and to put tens of thousands more police and support staff on the streets? No. Not long ago, the Tories said they agreed. But the consequence is that we cannot afford a new wave of high investment - without higher taxes. Again, let's hear the truth.
Glenrothes offers little help when it comes to the next general election result. But it reminded us that nothing in politics is inevitable: politicians who have recovered a sense of purpose can recover some authority, even popularity. What matters isn't a "Brown bounce" in a byelection; it's the bounce in his step that makes politics unpredictable again.
jackie.ashley@guardian.co.uk