I was born in the UK, and I’ve lived all my life here, but I’ve never quite been able to reconcile myself with the weather.
Most of the year passes in a grey, eternally chilly manner, often paying host to a weak drizzle of rain. The sun is simply known as a stranger in a strange land that visits during summer, but there are no guarantees of that either. I wake up, day after day, to an ashen tone outside the window, and I try to keep myself warm by bundling up under a duvet that I tug up to my chin. Even when it’s warm inside, it’s still miserable to look out at the grey world through that window, and it gets particularly grim in Autumn, when darkness arrives as early as five o’clock in the afternoon, and soggy leaves and mud cover pavements.
When we do get real heat and sunshine, however, the feeling is almost indescribable. Life is suddenly more exciting, the outside world is something to be savoured instead of avoided. I feel as if my body is somehow deriving power, Superman-like, from the Sun. After one particularly unpleasant visit to the dentist last summer I remember walking home and basking in the sunlight and the heat that blanketed my skin. It felt genuinely therapeutic. Unlike Autumn – or any other season for that matter – I could walk down a street in the evening and it still be light and warm. Weather can be misleading here, mind. I distinctly remember an unusual sunny day where I was so enthused to head outside due to the weather that I started playing the cheerful ‘Here Comes the Sun’ by The Beatles while I prepared to leave the house. Just as I was ready, the rain started. There Goes the Sun.
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