The seasons in England do funny things to you.

Take spring, for example – we’d never seen so much house cleaning and general busy-ness until we moved here.  Spring takes on a whole new category when you’ve been cooped up inside a little box with closed windows and the back garden looks like it is more suited to ducks – the worm holes in the lawn forming little mounds of dirt and going anywhere near the shed results in lots of clods of dirt sticking to your shoes.  Some years I noticed that I hadn’t opened the back sliding patio doors and so the next year taped them shut to reduce draughts!  We get quite used to living cheek-to-jowl and find ourselves prowling the shopping centres for lighted entertainment during the darker months.

So the explosion which is springtime is truely a release of sorts.  Everyone is clipping, cutting, shaking or just dressing differently.  Houses are opened again and aired while the birds and animals take on a whole different attitude to activity and get into quite a buzz.  Too often we foreigners waited until it was warm – which comes around June or July here – and had all too short a summer as a result.  Nowdays we get going in March or earlier and tolerate working outside with jackets and gloves so as not to miss out on the longer days!

A flip side is that winter often finds me getting depressed.  I’ve found a recent innovation is a Philips ‘blue lamp’ which has an array of strong blue LEDs is really good to help get over this; I use it regularly most mornings by beaming it into my face while working.  Sounds strange, works well.  There’s a lot of science facts and figures behind it but other than the fact that the blue light is almost azure in colour but closer to a maya or cyan it is quite pretty and adds a needed spot of brilliance to my day.