As the days get longer, the return of colour and beauty lifts the spirits
It’s that time of year when the sun slacks. Clocking in late, clocking off early. The sun’s out there having an affair with the other side of the world and the UK is plunged into darkness and depression at 4pm. You start reading in the early afternoon, get to the end of a chapter and realise you can barely see the pages. You idly check the weather app and discover there are precisely seven minutes to get your walk in before the sun sets and the hum of the street lights starts. You basically live in a cave.
Thank God then, or rather science, that the winter solstice has passed and the days are beginning to get lighter, longer. The seasonal affective disorder that hamstrings many people starts to ease; LED lamps are returned to cupboards. Vitamin D supplements begin to be replaced with the real thing. You’ll stop yawning at 7pm, believing it is midnight.
Back in the Before Times, the days getting longer meant the joyous return of weekday socialising. Leaving the office late and still having a shot at a beer outside – wearing sunglasses! Or getting up, shaking down the picnic blanket and saying goodbye to friends – all of you with deep grassy imprints on your legs – finally, at 10pm. Coming out of the cinema or theatre and finding the sky still blue. Lolling about on a Kent beach for hours and hours, even if you arrived at lunchtime. Witnessing the gorgeous violet gloaming during a walk in the park.
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As the country is once more locked down, one of the few entertainments to sustain us outside the bricks and mortar of our homes is nature. It’s hard to drag yourself outside for fresh air when the ambience is equivalent to stumbling from the bedroom into the bathroom for a wee in the middle of the night.
The return of light, however, means the return of colour, the return of beauty and a lifting of the spirits. You can say hi to your neighbours on their front steps again, now that they are actually visible and not just a silhouette against a porch. The return of light means the coming of spring; I don’t live near any leaping lambs but it’s nice to know they’ll be out there, somewhere, causing havoc and looking adorable. It’s good to see daffodils doing their thing again and staying out late.
It’s not that cosy nights in with Netflix aren’t nice (other streaming services are available). They are. It’s just time for them to be pushed a little later on in the schedule. Let there be light!
