Late October and November. The clocks change and that darkness suddenly hits. Winter is here and you know it just gets darker and colder from here.
January and February. Everyone is broke. All your mates are doing dry January. You think about doing it too, because can it really get any worse? Yes it can, you could be sober. Dark and cold. You’re craving a holiday.
December. Well, it’s complicated. I have the double-whammy of my birthday and Christmas, which softens the blow for me. Morning drinking, eating your body weight in cheese, giving and receiving gifts; nice little traditions and seeing the family, Christmas can be lovely. But then there’s that weight of expectation — that NYE should be your best night of the year, that it’s the season to be jolly. That we should be one happy family. That we should be happy, that we should be grateful. Those expectations can weigh on us at any time, but at Christmas they often feel a little heavier.
September to mid October. A variable time. Crap weather in September can be particularly heartbreaking (summer is over). However, I notice that when we have a freakily warm ‘Indian Summer’ (like this year), we cherish it a bit more. ‘Soak it in boys, this feeling won’t last.’ But yeh, mostly a forgettable time of year.
August. The days don’t feel as long anymore and there is sense of foreboding that summer is coming to end. But at the same time, summer can feel like it is at its height — the bank holidays, the school holidays — the office is empty! August feels both fleeting and frenzied (we grasp at every weekend like it’s our last) but also listless and drifting (nothing happens. It’s the ‘silly season’).
March to mid-April. In my head, hope did not burst out of Pandora’s box. She crept slowly out and gradually filled the world. March can feel like winter, cold and bleak — like an extension of February. But slowly and surely, you start to feel the sun on your skin again. The evenings are brighter and you’re no longer returning from work in the dark. Hope slowly fills the air and before you know it, you’re sitting in a beer garden again.
Late June and July. It’s the height of summer. It is just fantastic. If you’re an adult without kids, it simply rocks. As a kid, you spend this period sweating buckets in a port-a-cabin studying maths until one of the sound teachers says, ‘you can take off your blazer, just don’t tell your Head of Year’. As an adult, you go to Ibiza, you go to Zante, you go to Ayna Napa, and you disgrace yourself at 4am while in shorts! All the while your colleagues with kids pick-up your emails.
Mid-April to Early June. Life isn’t about finding the honey, it’s about searching for honey. The honey is guarded by horrible bees that swarm your face and hands. And honey itself… yeah it’s delicious but it never lasts. But the search, the hunt, the anticipation, the dreaming, the closing your eyes and imaging the sweet necter hitting your lips. This period is a celebration of the search.
In southern England, May can be bloody hot. Take every great thing about late June and July and then give it a sprinkle of that buzz of anticipation. The buzz of the search. The days are still getting longer and the weather is only getting better - ‘this is just the beginning mate, just wait until we get that honey.’
