Back in the days of darkness, I woke up in the dark, and drove the kids to school in the dark, and went just little bit mad in the dark. Nearing 8 am in the middle of December, the sky looked like this:
Post-solstice, when the sun started to rise that small bit earlier, I rejoiced.
A few weeks later, and dawn has been clocking in much earlier. It’s brighter before 6am than it used to be at 8am.
By mid June, we’re going to start seeing that pre-dawn brightness at 4am, and seeing the last of twilight past 10pm. For those of you back in the US — at least back in my home area of Maryland — pre-dawn lightening won’t show up until 5am in July, and you’ll be nice and dark for fireworks at 9pm.
I honestly don’t know how to cope with this wide swing of sunshine. I’m genetically tuned to soak up as much sun as possible, and if that means waking up at 4 am and not going to sleep until midnight, I have a feeling that is what’s going to happen.
Does it seem strange that I’m obsessed with this? The sun, sunshine, brightness, warmth — it’s a whole aspect of living in Britain that I didn’t sufficiently understand or prepare to experience. Maybe it’s like childbirth, or running a marathon, or baking bread: you just have to be there to get what it’s about.
For some reason people keep telling me to enjoy the weather and the sun this end-of-March and early-April, because this is summer. This “heat” we’re having now — 60F — is as good as it is going to get. Later the sun will be out for much of each 24 hour day, the children will never sleep, and it will rain all the time and get cold again. Like, in July. To those people, I say: please don’t make me punch you in the face.
It is gorgeous and blue and bright and golden outside today. And it will stay this way. Forever.
Crumpets in Camelot 