South African winters have a particular way of making themselves known.
The first clue is often not the temperature. It is the moment you wash your hands and wonder when they became quite so rough. Or when your face feels a little taut after a shower. Or when the cream you've ignored for months suddenly earns a permanent place on the bathroom shelf.
Winter has arrived.
We tend to blame the cold, which is only partly guilty. Winter air carries less moisture and the crisp, dry conditions many of us enjoy come with a small trade-off. Skin loses moisture more readily and begins to feel the effects.
Of course, we don't help matters.
Faced with a chilly morning, most sensible people turn the shower temperature up until the bathroom resembles a small tropical weather system. It feels magnificent. Our skin, however, is often less enthusiastic.
Hot water strips away some of the natural oils that help keep skin comfortable. Add a few weeks of dry air and it is not unusual to find yourself reaching for hand cream more often than usual.
This is hardly a new problem.
Long before skincare aisles stretched for metres and promised miraculous transformations, people relied on ingredients that were close at hand. Honey, beeswax and Aloe Ferox have been part of that story for generations. Not because they were fashionable, but because they were available, familiar and trusted.
There is something reassuring about that.
The seasons change. Winter arrives. Hands become dry. Someone reaches for the cream.
Some things do not require reinvention.
Perhaps that is why winter has a way of encouraging small rituals. A warm bath at the end of the day. A richer cream before bed. A little extra time spent looking after skin that has spent the day facing cold mornings and dry air.
Nothing dramatic.
Nothing revolutionary.
Just the quiet acknowledgement that winter asks a little more of us.
And perhaps that is the real lesson of the season.
When winter arrives, your skin notices first. The rest of us usually catch up a few weeks later.