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Here Comes The Sun
Seeing the light of day
One of the worst things about winter is not so much the cold but the lack of light. Recently, with the clocks going forward in the UK, the mornings have become darker for awhile with the payoff of surplus daylight at the end of the day.
As I’m an early riser this means returning to having a torch at 6 am when I take the dogs out in the back garden for their early morning pee. I go with them in case they encounter a dead rat, bloated by rat poison and suddenly being thrust into a losing battle of wrestling it from Moth’s jaws — I have a vivid imagination that way.
But to celebrate the longer evenings, from the beginning of this month, the cemetery gates are open later. This means we can existentially balance morning walks around the lake, amidst the dreaming spires (sort of) of the learned, with sunset strolls amongst the dead. A microcosm of life and death, and everything in-between, all in one day.
As the days stretch out, I am looking forward to a change in my general mood, and to have the Spring back in my step. It is well known that a lack of light can affect mood, even cause clinical depression. They have a name for it, Seasonal Affective Disorder or, appropriately enough, SAD.
If you look on the government sites they will give you the authoritative spiel that lack…