Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Rage, rage against the dying of the light

The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.
Wordsworth (‘Immortality Ode’)

January 23rd has been calculated to be the most miserable day of the year. Christmas has gone, the credit card bills arrive just as the new year resolutions depart, the weather is bleak, the nights still long. It was the day I was born. In a suburb of Croydon. A suburb of a suburb. It pissed down with rain that night. It’s a trauma I’ve never quite got over. Rudely ejected into a cold, wet, dark world. I wanted to climb back into the warm, and have been yearning for the warmth ever since.

Last year I did the sensible thing on my birthday (the big 4-0), and flitted off to then sun. A week spent in sun-lounger stupour under the blue skies of Sharm el Sheikh was the perfect remedy for anniversary angst.

This year, I’m in London, having failed to secure a sunlit birthday bolthole. But also with important work to do. As chief architect of the sunlit utopia we must build, there is much to turn my hand to in these dim dark days. The solar struggle goes on…

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