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Roger Rabbits with |
I have endured more than 70, some a lot more butt-biting than others.
So I have good reason to hate winter. I hate being arbitrarily deprived of daylight. I hate the weather dictating what I should wear, what I can and can’t do, and how it impacts our moods.
Cold, grey day equals crappy mood.
It’s said winter isn’t a season but a full-blown, dawn-to-dark slog to keep warm, stable and vaguely happy.
And it’s a fact a moderate climate improves the mood of people by setting off serotonin, the happy juice, and lowering stress. We will need it – we have a general election and four tests against the Springboks, in their backyard, coming up.
“Kom maar op!!” they’re crying on the veldt. “Bring it on!” That’ll raise the temperature a bit.
Burn your socks
But imagine a moderate-plus climate with a “sweet spot” of 20 to 25 degrees Celsius. Burn your socks and singlets. I was taught to hate the cold by a cruel, sadistic teacher – a sou’wester straight off the Ross Ice Shelf.
As a kid in the deep south, I would cycle home into that bitter wind, which would blow, rain, hail and sleet sideways up the leg of your school shorts. It attacked your boyhood. I hated it.
We shouldn’t hate. It occupies too much bad space in your head and heart. But I hate winter like I hate cold tripe and onions and hangovers. And the Crusaders winning Super Rugby. Again.
Charlie agrees about winter. Charlie, Charles Dickens.
As a Londoner, the great novelist would have preferred Saracens over the Crusaders. I can bang on about winter but when Dickens does it, we listen.
“It was a dark, cold, gloomy day…” quilled Charlie in his novel Bleak House. “…with a drizzling rain that seemed to soak into the very bones, and a fog so thick you could see nothing”.
Doesn’t that make you shiver and shudder with the “bleak”.
Burst into flames
Then Dickens gave us some warmth, a break from “bleak”. He has the character Krook dying from spontaneous human combustion – SHC – he simply burst into flames and reduced to ashes. SHC was a literary tool to save us slipping into a hypothermic coma, “bleaking” out before finishing Bleak House.
Irish writer Bram Stoker’s genre was gothic and vampire horror – he wrote Dracula. He hated winter too.
“The sky is dead, cold, leaden, grey, the wind a low faint moan. And the world looks as if it’s dying.”
Grief – you’d feel like ending it all.
SHC is a figment of literature, but not being eaten alive in 11th Ave. That was very real, and a reason to hate winter.
Eaten by a brolly (sidehead)
It’s dark and bucketing down as I head for the office. I’m ready for it. All Gore-Tex’ed up, and the SunLive brolly goes up faster than the price of lamb, as I exit the car.
Then I’m attacked and swallowed … by steel ribs and canopy as a brolly spontaneously snaps shut. With me inside. “*#@*!!!*”
The glasses fly off into the gloom, car keys sink in the stormwater, and expletives fly as I fight off a man-eating brolly. I was in charge of getting to work dry, until I wasn’t.
More humiliating were the belly laughs from a woman across the road who’d witnessed the spectacle. How cruel her schadenfreude. And of course my wet butt would be the butt of jokes in her office. “Silly old git got swallowed by his brolly.” Very funny!
Now, as we sit moping in front of the heat pump in our thermals while daubing anti-itch cream on our chilblains, we can be comforted that we’ll be over the hump Sunday. It’s shortest day falls this Sunday, June 21.
SAD Times
Why does the sun bother rising? Because when it descends again after just 9.5 hours of daylight, the SAD, the seasonal affective disorder, overwhelms us again. The low mood, fatigue, lack of energy, hypersomnia or oversleeping, carb cravings, weight gain, social withdrawal. All primarily linked to reduced sunlight.
But the suffering is very real.
SAD one: “I hate winter. I get sick, sad and irritated by everything. AND, I look like a boy in a beanie”.
SAD two: “I hate keeping lights on all day”.
SAD three: “Winter sports shouldn’t be in winter”.
SAD four: “I can’t function in darkness”.
Cranky
A Kiwi colleague in London said her SAD kicks in soon as the Christmas decorations come down.
“Leave for work in the dark, come home in the dark. It’s relentless and draining. And on rare days there is sun, it doesn’t get high enough to offer warmth or relief.”
Makes her more cranky, tired and lazy than normal.
Sounds more like seasonal ANNOYANCE disorder – annoys rather than depresses. Because she finds a medicinal Guinness or merlot, or three, in front of an open fire at the Kings Head in Tooting fixes it. And a Vitamin D tablet.
So come Sunday there will only be 163 days, or thereabouts, until summer breaks through the “bleak” on Tuesday, December 1. Just 23 weeks and counting!