Naked ambition
Or, the lengths you have to go to to promote a book

Yes. I’ve been negligent. Can you blame me? And this is probably a fleeting visit, impelled by an opportunity too good to miss. I’ve been silent for good reasons. Yet another lousy summer has broken my heart, my will and sealed my gob. There’s only so much moaning even I can do about the weather. 3 pants summers in a row, and I admit defeat, and start to wonder if my book, my blog, my very provocative existence in these sunless isles (sunless in summer that is, which, in my rather nostalgic unreasonableness I maintain the outmoded delusion that this might be the proper season for it), is not contributing to the vile weather pattern that has now set in. And so, I’ve stopped blogging a dead horse, and kept schtum.

Why am I breaking cover and radio silence, now? Because, my friends, I’ve been asked to give a talk about my poor book at the British Naturist Association’s annual beano at a leisure complex somewhere in the north of these isles next weekend, and I thought this is something to share with you.

Talking of which, and you are no doubt ahead of me here, what else am I planning to share? It’s a fair question, given, one of the techniques of conquering nerves about public speaking is to ‘imagine the audience naked’. Not very helpful here, given they will be (potentially 400 of them). Do I imagine them clothed, or do I take the plunge myself, and make my first nude appearance since I essayed it as an amateur streaker all them years ago? I have given the matter much thought. At least 2 seconds worth. It would be rude not to.

Watch this space...(no, that one, what are you like?).

Et in Suburbia Ego

The heatwave (the glorious, glorious heatwave, which is only just petering out) has allowed me to open a door I've been itching to unlatch for 2 years now. I wanted to go somewhere special when researching my chapter on Memory. But, as Joni put it, clouds got in the way. This is what I wrote anyway:

"The past is indeed a foreign country. They have much better weather there.

My earliest fully-formed memory: I was four, and supposed to be meeting my mother outside the school gates. She was a few minutes late, and I took the opportunity to sneak into the allotment next door. Strictly out of bounds. But the door was ajar, and the temptation strong. I can still recall the ecstasy of tearing through the sun-drenched groves of sky-high scarlet beans and lavender, chasing cabbage whites that tumbled from my grasp into the impossible blue beyond. Most of all, I recall the sensation of being energized by the sun. A photosynthetic surge that intoxicated me then, and ever since.

I don’t remember how I got out. Maybe an angel with a flaming sword expelled me and shut fast the door; for, on being retrieved, I apparently declared to my frantic mother that what I had found there was ‘paradise’. I stand by that claim. For I must have felt instinctively the transformative power of sunshine. Its alchemical ability to turn the humblest patch of suburban verdure into the Elysian Fields, and how it can preserve and sanctify moments from our pasts. If I didn’t know it then, I certainly know it now, and can view this moment as formative in my heliotropic quest. A version of the oldest journey of all – to get back to the Garden".

And that's exactly what I did, the scorcher finally allowing me to unlock this sensual time capsule, and see if it was still there. I'd fully expected a George Orwell coming up for air, and down to earth, experience of discovering my paradise had been paved over long ago. With good reason. What used to be a hospital right next to the allotment had just become 'des res' apartments as even Thornton Heath near Croydon pretends it's part of London. So maybe my bid to get back to the Garden was just in time. The door was shut this time, and I couldn't see a soul working there through the chainlink fence. I prowled the perimeter, and was ready to frame the the phrases that made a poetic virtue of this disappointing necessity. But then I spotted an amiable looking old cove sweating towards the gate with a bunch of recently unearthed onions. I think he could see on my face that I was telling the truth about why I wanted to be there. And so he let me in. To rove through the dusty tracks of lost time, searching for the gold I had buried long ago.

And it was there. Miraculously and sunnily still there, just as I'd left it almost 40 years ago. I suppose it's not all that surprising that the allotment remained unchanged. That's sort of what they, and nature and stuff are for. Bucolic oases, whose cyclical continuity defy the flux and sprawl of 'progress' beyond their borders. And I'd come at the same time of year (high summer, but still term time), same time of day (home time), and under a scorching sky. The sun did its unique magic, in creating, preserving and restoring this very first memory. The earliest experience, exposed brilliantly on the photographic plate of memory, had left the truest deepest trace.

It's old father sun's day.

It's that time again, the midsummer solstice, which strides up to us with wearisome predictability. Some perversity in the cosmos always decrees that the sun is elsewhere when he should be taking a bow for his longest performance. It means, of course, after this it's all down hill. The nights will start drawing in soon, and before we know it, the ads will start selling Christmas. Yes, I'm back, to bring a little sunshine into everyones lives.

This day presents the opportunity to assess the summer so far, and issue a mid-term appraisal. Now, let me see... It struck me the other day that either I'm softening along with my brain, or this summer hasn't been that bad so far. That bad being another way of saying anything like the last 2. It's all relative, I suppose. A friend who I hadn't seen for a while greeted me the other day with 'you must be pretty miffed with the lousy summer'. And there I was secretly thinking it had been OK. Not wonderful. It's not a proper summer for me until I hear the phrase 'hosepipe ban'. But we have to be thankful for small mercies in this climate, what with the solar credit crunch 'an all. I can say this much for summer 09 so far, Its heart is in the right place. It has, as Wilde once said of nature in general, good intentions. But has difficulty carrying them out. It just needs a bit of encouragement, to get back into its scorcher stride. So, instead of moaning, I'll look on the bright side, and say thank you. Thank you sun, for a miracle of a sunny dry bank holiday in May. Thank you for some good weekends (we'll turn a blind eye to the weeks in between). And thank you for not allowing it to rain that much. We really missed you the last 2 years, and we can see that your trying your best. Three cheers for the sun, and let's have a bloody good scorcher. Huzzah.

BTW, regulars of my romance blog venture might be amused to know I'm giving a talk about my book at Shakespeare & Co in Paris tomorrow. I'm hoping that a long lost lover will turn up, sing me her songs and sweep me off my feet. I'll let you know if it happens... TTFN.

Fair weather friends to meteorology

This story made me laugh. I quote it directly:

Tourist chiefs at a seaside resort have accused the Met Office of losing the town £1 million because it got the weather forecast wrong on Bank Holiday Monday.

Bournemouth in Dorset was supposed to suffer thundery showers, according to the Met Office, but instead it actually had sunshine on the hottest day of the year so far, with temperatures hitting 22 degrees. However, tourism bosses said around 25,000 visitors stayed away from the town because of the "negative" prediction for rain. Mark Smith, head of Bournemouth Council's tourism department, said: "We do suffer badly from inaccurate weather reports. "The forecast was for thundery showers throughout the day but after 9am it remained bright and sunny and was the hottest day of the year so far. "The average amount spent by visitors per head is £41, so even for one day that cost us over a million pounds."

Will these be the same British Tourism bodies that will claim the weather is not important for British tourism, as our country has 'so much more to offer', should we suffer another washout summer? Bournemouth in the rain? I've been there. Don't do it.

Full story at: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090528/tuk-weather-blunder-sparks-1m-storm-6323e80.html

Time to Cover up? Too late.

As the sun finally comes out in strength, so do the public health messages frightening the living daylight out of us. Cover up is their theme. I find this particularly apt, given the true and shameful history of sunbathing. I tell this story in my book, but I was advised against being too cheeky or controversial by my editor. I also expected a lot more flack when interviewed by radio presenters. But, apart from the first one I encountered when publicising the hardback last year, all of those I've spoken to since have been sweetness and light on the sun safety controversy. It was his very first question, and it completely threw me: 'Why have you written a celebration of sunshine? Aren't we told to get out of it, and to avoid it?'* I think I faffed out some limp riposte, and kicked myself immediately afterwards when I thought of all the clever cutting things I should have said. And I was primed with notes the next time round, but the next time never came.

So, for what's worth, this is what I should have said. Cover up? I'm glad you mentioned that. Let me tell you about the most shameful cover up of all. The very same people who now tell us to get out of the sun, are those who encouraged us to make the most of it in the first place. Sun-bathing was invented, and promoted by public health authorities between the wars, not by the fashion industry that has been allowed to take the rap for it. Slip, slap, slop is their mantra. But they certainly slip up on the facts, slap down the wrong culprits, and are very sloppy in their grasp of history. Read all about it in my fascinating, controversial book (a precis of this story is found in the SunLounge section of my website, here). Incidentally, the photo above is not an early session of the Human League, complete with half-naked junior fan club, but an artificial sunlight clinic from the 1920s, exposing wee nippers to larges doses of UV light. Just proving the young have always been susceptible to the fashionable allure of the sun tan.

But we now know better, don't we. Do we? Why should we trust one set of ‘experts’ telling us to get out of it, when another set not 50 years before threw their equal conviction into telling us to get out into it? Given the sun is the source of all life, it would be odd that this stuff that we’ve been living with for millennia was intrinsically so bad for us. Especially as our ancestors were hunter-gatherers, then agriculturalists. We evolved spending a good deal of time under the elements.

But skin cancer is on the rise, we are told. That's the media simplifying things again. There are a few dermatologists and epidemiologists (the study of health in populations), who are prepared to speak out against the general of the sun being public health enemy no. 1. Looking into it, it would appear that the rise of skin 'cancer', is due to a re-classification of what are actually benign growths. In fact about 95 per cent of skin cancers are basal or squamous cell epitheliomas, which do not spread from the skin and kill. Medicine has become more cautious due to the fear of litigation. It's safer to be class all growths as potentially suspicious, rather than run the risk of being sued for negligence. Epidemiologists have also calculated that there is a far greater death toll from vitamin D deficiency than from deaths conclusively attributable to exposure to sunshine.

The point is, it’s just so one sided. When I published a piece on the history of the sun tan in a national newspaper they provided a sidebar called sunbathing by numbers, which provided some figures such as '1,800 people die from melanoma disease each year'. What, globally? More people die of trouser-related mishaps. '10-15 minutes in the sun provide the vitamin D your body needs daily'. When? Where? In winter in the northern hemisphere it jolly well doesn't. There is, in fact, no agreed optimum intake for Vitamin D, and there is no toxicity from sunlight synthesised vitamin D, which cannot be said for food supplements.

But not just in the national media, the so called expert research journals also show their true colours when reporting this issue (the skin care and pharmaceutical companies do spend an awful lot of money in advertising in these journals, o, and funding research). I discovered this little gem in a reputable dermatological journal. The paper’s title declared its hypothesis: that ‘UV Light tanning [is] a type of substance-related disorder’. A psychological illness in other words. To prove this the researchers modified questionnaires used for alcoholics and drug-users to apply to tanning. They substituted drink or fix for ‘tan’ – eg. “when you wake up in the morning do you want to sun tan?”; or “do you try other non-sun-related activities, but find you really still like spending time in the sun?” – and descended on sunbathers minding their own business on Galveston Island Beach, Texas.

Now, I’m no scientist, but even I can see this is totally spurious from a methodological point of view. Not only were the results underwhelming, there was no control. I might easily have taken the same questionnaire and descended on a troupe of church goers in bible belt America and asked them the very same questions, substituting tan or sunbathing for 'prayer' or 'church-attendance', and got probably more conclusive results. Does that make churchgoing a substance related disorder (especially high church where they swing that holy smoke about). What’s evident and quite staggering is the need to defame this practice, and that a scientific journal is prepared to publish such unscientific piffle. Why? Because there are vested interests in scaring us out of the sun.

If this appears paranoid and conspiratorial check this out: "The Sun Safety Alliance, Inc. (SSA) is a communication and educationally focused not-for-profit organization with the mission to reduce the incidence of skin cancer. SSA is dedicated to creating national awareness of skin cancer as an important health issue. SSA believes that a concerted focus on skin cancer prevention, education, and awareness is the only way to change generations of behavior." One of their main recommendations is this: "Use of sunscreen with SPF 15 (for children under six, SPF 30 is recommended) or higher during the first 18 years of life can reduce some types of skin cancer by nearly 78%." Most of their advice involves slapping the stuff on, all year round. Their board members and business partners? You've guessed it, commercial organisations such as the National Association of Chain Drug Stores Foundation, and the manufacturers of healthcare products. Fear sells, but the sun is free. Enjoy.

*These views were particularly galling, given the presenter was interviewing me from the Costa del Sol (where the radio station was based), and I was in rainy London. Like the corpulent, sated poor house governors in Oliver Twist, he could not imagine how we poor orphans might be asking for a little more.

I haven't the foggiest
I'm frankly amazed at how much credibility folk give me when it comes to matters meteorological. They assume because I wrote a book about sunshine, I know a lot about the weather, and, here's the funny bit, might be able to predict what kind of summer we're going to have.

I'd better put the record straight. First of all, I have no interest in the weather in itself. I have a more than unhealthy interest in what the weather will do in the immediate future, and how this will affect my well-being / sanity; but I have no love of weather itself (it's the stuff that gets in the way of sunshine). I have no interest in or knowledge of meteorology. That is a science - the science of meteors, ie. stuff that falls from the skies, and I'd really rather it didn't. My relationship with the skies is profoundly superstitious, untouched by the supposed scientific breakthroughs that have 'revolutionised' forecasting since the middle of the last century. Supercomputers have replaced seaweed, in other words, which is a good deal cheaper and about as accurate.

What I do know of the weather which might form the basis of a prognosis for the summer is based on my acute memory of summers past. The data stored in my head and in my heart allows me to pronounce on the likely outcome for the summer, which can be summed up neatly as: 'buggered if I know'. The one sure thing I know about the British weather is that it is unknowable. And, therefore, a typical exchange in response to my stoical scepticism might go as follows:

Naive communicant: 'But we're having a lovely spring'
Sage who knows his onions (me): 'Groan. That's what worries me. We had a corker of a spring in 2007, followed by the worst summer in living memory. And last year? More sunshine in February than August'.
Slightly abashed naive communicant: 'So a good spring means a shoddy summer?'
Slightly smug sage: 'On recent performance. And vice versa. The spring of 2006 was pants. The wettest March since George IV, and dreary up to June; then 2 months of unbroken sunshine'.
Crestfallen communicant: 'So we're in for another stinker then?'
Starting to annoy sage: 'Not necessarily. You recall the summer of 03?
Weary communicant: 'What when all those people died from the heatwave?'
Wistful sage: 'That's the one. Glorious. Started in May, pretty much kept going without relent through to September. Records broken in August. It was ace.'
Brightening communicant: 'Ah, but we've had a really cold winter. It follows cold winter, scorching summer. So they say'.
Triumphantly smug sage: 'They say a lot of tosh. Winter of 62-3. Return of the ice age for 3 months. Followed by about average summer. And we all know what 'about average' UK summer is. Shite'.

I might hen bore them stupid with my roll call of good and bad summers, until they share my conviction that there's just no telling one way or the other, and hold a cast-iron conviction never to even mention the weather to me again.

Forecasting about

One of the curses of extreme helioholism is extreme scepticism when it comes to what 'they' say about the kind of summer we are likely to have. This is aggravated by a long memory and a festering grievance at the number of times 'they' have let us down in the past. 'They' being both the weather forecasters and the heavens themselves. 'They', as far as I'm concerned, are in it together, to set up false hope, frustrate desire and have fun at my expense.

I'm truly amazed at how short most peoples memories are. And simply staggered by how much faith they are prepared to put in these shabby shamen with supercomputers the weather men. How many times have I heard it asserted with straight-faced sincerity over the last week that 'it's going to be a good one this year'? And how many ejaculations of derision have I issued in response? Wearily I shake my head at their innocence, and point out they say something of the like every bleeding year, including ... and I always pause here for optimum effect, raising a horny finger heavenwards to silence their prattling platitudes with my sageous sermonising ... including that annus horribilis the so-called 'summer ' of 2007. Then, they - and I've worked myself up into just short of a frenzy by now, verily spitting the word out - they blithely predicted there was a good chance that that summer might be much like the one before. A scorcher, whose kind I fear we've seen the last of, going on recent performance. And we all know what happened then. I haven't forgotten, and I certainly haven't forgiven. Like some old fool who refuses to buy a 'Jap' car, because of what they did in the war, I refuse to buy their prognoses, and hold a burning dagger in my heart for their long-range mendacity.

They are up to their tricks again. Barbecue summer? My arse. Is this what's got everyone excited? Mealy mouthed half-promises to placate an easily duped nation. It'll take more than that to fool me. And don't say I didn't warn you if those barbecue coals bought in anticipation in May are still unused come September.

Deja vu (it must be spring)

Really, I of all people should know better, but it's happened again. A few days of fine weather, a particularly enchanting evening bathed in mellow gold after a day canopied by endless blue, and even I find myself tempted to believe this might be a foretaste of something to come. A proper summer, that is. The kind we had when an ice cream van, like the one that went round and round Arnold Circus, Shoreditch where I sat this evening catching the last rays of sun after work, tinkling out Yankee Doodle Dandy (the van that is, not me), was a permanent fixture of our summer streets. Not making opportunistic forays in spring time, because you never know if this might just be our lot for another year, and because he's still pushing stock purchased in 2007.

But there's something about spring that induces an absurd amnesia, even in hardened cynics and anxious sky-scrutineers like me. An enchantment tinged with nostalgia, redolent of a time when it was always summer, summer never let you down, and you would live forever anyway. And an enchantment not unlike the complicit enthrallments of love. Very like. The willingness to believe this year's scorcher had better last. Prepared to be swept away by its seductive coaxings, and let the guard down. Based on recent performances that would be a mistake. (Choose what referent you will here). But, for one enchanted evening I gave in to its sweet sophistries. Watch this space.

I can see a tunnel at the end of all these lights

Well, this is a cracking start to spring. A whole week of the golden stuff to lift the hearts of the nation in these depressing times. It certainly put a smile on most people's chops, and did its usual magic of making even we Brits spring in our steps. It also made the story of my new appointment as Thomson's Dr Sunshine eminently newsworthy, and I spent all Friday talking to radio stations up and down the country about why sunshine makes us happy, and what being Dr Sunshine involves.

That's Dr Sunshine. Not 'Mr' Sunshine, as one presenter - I forget which in my whirlwind tour and indignation - termed me. I was that close to retorting, in Mike Myers' Dr Evil Voice: 'That's Dr Sunshine. I didn't spend 6 years in sunshine school to be called Mr'. But I didn't. The thrill of live radio for me is the risk that I might just say what I shouldn't, but I managed to rein that retort in, and do a credible job of bestowing due dignity to my important new post.

I also feel I need to make perfectly clear that being Dr Sunshine doesn't mean I'm suddenly of a sunny disposition. A few friends thought it hilarious that this curmudgeonly old so and so, was now called Dr Sunshine, as there was generally precious little of it shining from any part of me for most of the year. Therefore I would like to clarify: my role is to explore it, assess it, grade it and help promote it. It's possible that in the process the high-grade sunshine may very well dispel the cloud-like melancholy that envelopes my sensitive soul. It remains to be seen. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed spring. Let's just hope that wasn't our summer, as so often happens. I for one, am taking no chances, and look forward to my first consignment...

The Sun Blog returns in style

Rejoice sun-lovers. Today (March 20), is the Spring Equinox, when the sun gains ascendancy over the darkness, and the days start to be longer than the nights. Our ancestors celebrated it with all kinds of exciting pagan shenanigans. But I mark the occasion with the return of LoveSunshine for its scorching summer season, and to announce an exciting new development: my new role as Dr Sunshine, Thomson holiday's very own resident sunshine expert.

What does that involve? Well, the best bit involves my going to all kinds of sunny destinations to assess their product, and help them give their customers what they really want. And what they really want is sunshine, it would appear. I helped Thomson devise a survey, which revealed that 97% of their sample considered the weather an important factor in their holiday choice. And three quarters stated that sunshine makes them feel happy. A whopping 92% considered sunshine the best way to beat stress. Sunshine is the ultimate feel-good tonic, and people considered at least one foreign holiday a year as essential, even in these straightened times. They were saving for a rainy day, literally, and that's what we generally get instead of a summer here. Which is good news for Thomson, and supports what I've been promoting in this blog and in my book - our fundamental need for sunshine, especially if we have another summer like the last two. Forget the financial climate, the real scandal is the meteorological one, and it's gratifying to see we Brits are still determined to flit off abroad to access the real stuff. The pound might be prostrate against the Euro, but the best news is sunshine is free.

And the best news for me, is my new role as Dr Sunshine. They will look to me for expert advice; I will help them understand the importance of sunshine from numerous perspectives; help shape their product offering, and its promotion. But, best of all, I get to sample it. It's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it. And you can see, I'm up to the task and ready to start assessing. Lab coat over my Speedos, clipboard and flip flops at the ready. It's my dream job (oh, and my book Sunshine is out in paperback in May). Here's to sunny days ahead... If you don't believe me, check out the press release; and if you need some instant sun check out Thomson's sunny delights here.

Normal service will be resumed in the spring

Like a shabby resturant at a holiday resort, I'm pulling my shutters for the winter. A blog dedicated to the delights of sunshine during the cold, damp dreary months, is destined to have a desperate time of it. Hold on, has had a desperate time of it, through the cold, damp dreary months of summer. Who, I ask you, really wants me droning on through the winter? It might be nice for the fortunate anonymous to send us sunny dispatches from down under, but that would only be rubbing it in. Imagine the helioholic hibernating (not, alas, migrating), in some dark musty cave of self-pity until spring time. Spring which will bring the publication of my lovely Sunshine book in paperback. And finally, I'm glad to say, with a sub-title that doesn't make my flesh creep with embarrassment. 'Why we love the sun'. Why do we? I'm glad you asked me, read all about it in etc...

And yet, I'm not hibernating quite. I'm cooking up a wee venture that I've just launched called 'But some of us are looking at the stars'. That'll keep me busy (I may even post more regularly there), and give me more scope to pontificate, during the winter months. More candlelight than sunlight, as you will see if you visit me at http://arkofromance.blogspot.com/ and join in. See you sunshine lovers in the spring...

Everywhere I go (I take the weather with me)

I'm back (in all senses). I can now confess the real reason for the rather up-beat, spring-in-my- stride, tone of my most reason posts. Yes the interminable fog of the summer had lifted; yes, we had a few late-vintage scorchers as meagre consolation for the insult that was summer; but this was all bolstered by a sneaky flit I was planning for mid October. So off I flitted and have now (alas) returned from a week in Crete - the southernmost island in Greece, and nearly the most southerly part of Europe.

I know what you're expecting: to hear of the torrential downpours that greeted me, the freak blizzards cutting off the beaches for exactly a week, and of my agonies of a holiday spent under a damp parasol drowning in gin. You'd be right to expect such things, because I sure as hell did. I'm not generally a superstitious chap, but I am when it comes to the weather. And I'm seriously beginning to think I'm cursed. In fact, it's only a matter of time before the Met Office ask me to notify them of my holiday plans as a pretty sure indication of the ghastly weather that part will surely experience while I'm there.

So, you can appreciate, it was with some trepidation that I boarded the plane last Tuesday from, of course, blue skies at Gatwick on my final attempt to get some sun for the year. Why do I not consult a forecast for my destination? To understand why I don't is to peer into the swirling cauldron of unreason and petulence that is my head when it comes to the weather. Because if I did, and discovered it was anything less than wall-to-wall sunshine, I'd be in two minds about boarding the plane. I've paid for sunshine, I demand sunshine, I expect nothing less. It's part of the excitement of going. Consequently my flights are interesting affairs for all concerned. I immediately read the signs. The pilot will generally mention the weather at destination as part of his spiel. It comes after the flight time, and the time difference at destination. This is no true indication. They lie. Yes they do. In the same way they preserve this fiction that people are able to sit back, relax, enjoy your flight (in a space that would contravene international animal welfare rights if you were a chicken, gripped with terminal boredom, discomfort and frustration), they want to manage our expectations very carefully. To the expert/ pessimist, their lies are transparent. 'I'll up date you later on the weather at destination' = it's pissing down, and if I were you I'd stay at home. 'The weather is a rather pleasant x degrees, with a light breeze, and some scattered clouds' = it's completely overcast, but muggy. Not mentioning it at all is ominous and can mean anything from hurricanes to locusts. Or it can mean he's forgotten. I can hope he's forgotten, and spend the rest of the flight staring out of the window.

Thence commences the white-knuckle ride that is my flight, with my face glued to the porthole willing the clouds to disperse and reveal the eldorado bellow. The clouds thicken. I tense up. How far left to go? They thin, disperse, disappear. I relax a bit. Can we just put down there please? They thicken again as we get closer. Can't we go just that bit further til we've lost 'em. And so on. No doubt many a neighbour has noticed my torments and feared the worst. Why is that guy so anxious? Sweating and mumbling to himself? Oh God, perhaps he's a suicide bomber, saying his final prayer before he…

To touch down under anything but glorious blue robs me of one of the chief pleasures: that extraordinary embrace of home coming when the warm air first hits you on leaving the plane. This has happened often, and it happened this time. Oh yes, Crete was overcast, and so was I. Here we go again, thought I and was simply intolerable for the first evening. Then comes the next ritual. The first moment of consciousness on the first morning. I'm quite an expert on that too. The light filtered through blinds, the time, the orientation of the hotel, how built up it is are all factored in before I summon up the courage tiptoe over and verify my worst fears....

I'll draw a veil now over the tantrums, the torments and teenage behaviour Dr Robert Mighall age 41 displays on such occasions. You don't want to know, and I'm not proud. Generally it comes out ok. It will lift by lunch time (as it did last week). The devils will give up their sport with me, I will find what I have been seeking and all is well with the world. Until next time. Christmas in Morocco. Booked last week. And it all starts again...

L'Allegro (at last)

Milton fans among you (?) would have seen this one coming, but none of us would have expected it to have taken quite so long. When I was embracing my inner melancholic (what do I mean inner?), and attempting to find some virtue in the climate that has seeped soddenly into our souls, I was hoping to flip it over as soon as the sun shone. As soon as the sun shone.... erhem.... But then it didn't, and it didn't and it didn't. And then it did, but I, of course was not here, was in fact selflessly suffering grey skies in Spain so we could have sun here. But now it is shining, and has been for about 4 whole days. So all is well with the world, and I'm walking on sunshine. Which prompts me to complete my dreary diptych on climate and creativity.

Sunshine may very well not be so conducive to art as rain is in this country. Walking on Sunshine (which is by a British band), is a lovely record. It perfectly sums up a sentiment in a burst of aural glee, with bouncy brass as yellow and shining as the old current bun itself. But no one could accuse it of being art. Club Tropicana - fun and sunshine, there's enough for everyone - is to, say Morrissey's rain-soaked melancholic musings, what a Club 18-30 holiday brochure is to Gerald Brenan's South of Granada, or Laurie Lee's As I woke up one Midsummer Morning (about the Costa del Sol before a hotel appeared). The Wham! (the ! says it all) song and video, is of interest principally to testify to our naivety back then in believing George Michael had even a passing interest in the ladies.

Sunshine turns our heads, and turns off our creativity. Perhaps. But not entirely. For a start, old habits die hard. Shelley's poem, 'Stanzas Written in Dejection Above the Bay of Naples' is a case in point. which opens: 'The sun is warm, the sky is clear, / The waves are dancing fast and bright,/' And describes a scene a travel brochure copywriter would weep to be able to describe. But old Percy B. continues:

Alas, I have nor hope nor health
Nor peace within nor calm around,
Nor that content surpassing wealth...
Nor fame nor power nor love nor leisure -
Others I see whom these surround,
Smiling they live and call life pleasure:
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

Good grief. Pull yourself together man. Stanzas written in dejection above a slag heap in Bolton I can accept. Spring 1818, Keats spent in Devon with his dying brother Tom. They had hoped to be in Lisbon, but couldn't afford it. It appears to have rained every day for about 6 weeks. Shelley, loafing above the bay of Naples on a sunny day, looking on one of the most glorious sights in Europe still, is feeling sorry for himself. And as for not having leisure. An Etonian aristocrat whose idea of a day's work was wearing a big blouse and penning a few grumpy lines while on permanent holiday (sorry exile from the political oppression of Britain) has no sympathy from me. But it does show you how deep the melancholy runs. It takes a while for the clouds to burn off.

It didn't take David Hockney long, if I may stray into another medium. He flits off to America in 1961, and comes to live there in 1963 drawn to southern California. 1963 is the year Summer Holiday came out, during the worst winter of the 20th century. When Cliff was singing about going where the sun shines brightly, and going where the sea was blue, our David was delighting in those very things, slapping 'em down in pure acrylic colour and turning the dream into art. We can do it. Grey misery might spur us into art, and, on the whole forge finer productions; yet it also spurs us into a desperate need to escape. And when we do escape we have eyes ready to see it and souls ready to engage with what we see. Like sunflowers kept in cellars, we only need someone to open to door to make us shine...

Right. That's quite enough pretentious bombast for one day. There are some sunbeams out there with my name on them, and the only canvas I'm going to be colouring today is the one stretched on my scrawny frame. Exits stage left humming Walking on Sunshine.

The secret of my perkiness?

Regular followers have expressed wonder and worry at the up-beat, positive and downright chipper face I have shown to the world in my last few postings. What's wrong? they enquire, concerned for my mental health. Isn't it obvious? Why, winter's fast approaching.

Pardon? You no doubt riposte. Has the helioholic finally lost it completely, or switched his affinities towards dark days, long nights and and ever longer thermal pants? Not at all. This always happens, especially after a lousy summer (so often, then): as winter approaches I cheer up. Not because I like winters, but it means I can give up hoping. And when I give up hoping, I give up despairing. I'm a different person. Indeed, I've just watched a weekend weather forecast with complete indifference. It doesn't touch or torment me. They informed us it's going to be rainy and grim and cold this weekend. But, unlike 4 weeks ago, I have no right to swear at the TV, curse the presenters and whatever mean little devil whose tricks they catalogue and collude in. Had they told me it was going to be fine it would be a welcome bonus, not a right; a cause for happiness, not the righteous indignation has gripped me for the last 4 months. As the weather worsens I simply wrap up - in all senses.

I have reverse SAD. While real sufferers start to get depressed at this time of year, I get on with life. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't like winter, and I simply loathe Christmas. For me it is a rehearsal for death (you see, it is still the sunshine Scrooge under the Santa outfit). Two things you can't avoid in life: Death and Christmas. Unless you do what I try to do each year, hook it to a Muslim country where it's warm and stay toasting til the coast is clear. But as the vile exercise is now extended over a three month period that would ruin me. Anyway, even there there's no escape (unless I smuggle myself into Mecca). I once spent Christmas in Cairo, and the Egyptians insisted on wishing me Merry Christmas. I once even had to flee from a Santa who wanted to hug me on the streets of Casablanca. I do not like winter. I do not like cold, I do not like dark. But as we've been having these conditions in summer for the last 2 years, I'm simply more prepared to tolerate them in their proper season, and without the deluded desire for anything better. Not that my relieved resignation means I've forgiven and forgot the outrage of these 'summers'. Nor 1985, 2000, 2002 for that matter either. Oh no. It's all gone in the book (it has actually), the pain, the anguish, the desperate longing for justice, have left deep deep scars. But 2007 and 2008 are now scars, rather than wounds. They have become history.

Besides, there's booking the Christmas escape jaunt, and maybe a cheeky little top up in between. For as Shelley put it, if winter's here, you can still tan your behind....

Rob reading from Common Ground, originally uploaded by Nina Pope.

I am a kid with a new toy. I've just discovered that I can blog directly from Flickr. I love Flickr, and pretty soon will explain why. I don't like the fact that I can't change the font, and I don't know how to add tags, but this is rather smashing. This is the last one from the event. I just shows that it is possible for me to be inside when the sun is out. Only my dusy boot is in the sun, while I was engrossed in Dickens, while the audience - vide gentleman on my left staring outside - are evidently engrossed in my sparkling words. The gentleman in not a helioholic wishing he was out in the sun, but an architectural historian wishing he was outside looking at the buildings and not listening to the berk in green who had roped him along with promise of marshes and routemasters. A jolly day nonetheless. And don't you think it impressive that a man can read and balance a disco ball on his head? (both photos by Nina Pope)

Why I was so frolicsome

City, originally uploaded by Nina Pope.

There you go. There's photographic evidence from the Great Common Ground Dickens Misadventure down the Thames, and then up the Thames, and then down the Thames again. Basically, a moving sunbathing platform as far as I was concerned. The City in all its finery. The last final, belated burst of summer.

Looking on the bright side (thanks to the sun)

On Sunday a trip that had been planned for almost a year took place, or didn't take place (depending on how you look at it). The idea was to take a boat down river, from the centre of London to Gravesend in Kent. Thence to board a bus (a lovely old routemaster), to take us to the Kent Marshes to explore the terrain evoked so powerfully in the opening pages of Dickens's novel Great Expectations. In an earlier life I was a Dickensian, and so before I wrote about sun, sun, sun, it was Fog Everywhere. I wrote a chapter about the Marshes and Dickens's novel for a book called Common Ground: Around Britain in Thirty Writers. A pot of Arts Council money was secured for a jolly to let people experience what I had written about, 45 expectant people signed up, and turned up at St Katharine's dock with great expectations for a trip into Dickensian Kent. It was then that we learned the day we had chosen (about 3 months ago), was the day our dear mayor Boris the Berk, had chosen to clean the Thames Barrier. I don't think he was actually doing it himself. Going by his appearance, cleaning isn't the top of his list of priorities or skills. But of all days in the year this was the one he decided to close the barriers and prevent us visiting the Marshes, the whole point of our day out and the reason 45 people were standing on a jetty on a Sunday morning. The skipper offered to drive up and down the river a bit, and we duly agreed.

A disaster. Tantrums, demands for reimbursement, threats to sue the organisers, Boris, the Port of London Authority, Old Man River? Not a bit of it. For a start, if you know the novel, it's rather fitting. When Pip and Magwitch attempt to make it down river, so the returned convict can hop it away, they are apprehended. But that's a nice, academic distinction. What saved the day was the kind old sun, smiling on us all day long, setting the river a-sparkle with diamond dance, and polishing everything a good deal shinier than Boris's char-woman with her J-Cloth and Mr Sheen up on his lousy Barrier. Balls to his Barrier. We had a rare old time soaking up the sun, knocking back the gin, and seeing the Thames, London, England, Creation at their finest.

For the summer, like the 5.55 train from Burgess Hill to Victoria has finally arrived. Late, ridiculously, shamefully late, but welcome nonetheless. It has been hanging around off and on for the last 13 days. 5 of them I spent in Spain, and I'd like to take the credit for kick starting the final burst of summer by selflessly leaving the country. Something that never fails to ensure the clouds clear, and usually follow me. I had planned to tell the woeful tale of leaving Gatwick through glorious blue to touch down in miserable grey Malaga nearly 2 weeks ago, but it would break your hearts or split your sides with laughter. Especially as I had fought tooth and nail to get my passport. The irony avalanched me prostrate in misery at the time. The airport security guards had to prise me off the tarmac as I wept and beat the floor in torment. But that is all rainwater under the bridge now. The sun has done his magic (both in Spain and back here), and saved what could have been a disaster, and for this he must be given full credit. What larks, old Sun. What larks.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Common-Ground-Around-Britain-Writers/dp/1904879934

A ´cautionary tale

We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison…
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

The one thing that makes living in this sun-denuded dungeon bearable is our ability to escape it. We are the undisputed leaders and hub of the budget airline industry, carrying some 80 million passengers around Europe each year, with 60 million of them starting or ending their journey in the UK. Unable to bear it much longer, and finding a window for a long weekend to Spain for guaranteed sun, I resolved to swell their ranks (how was I to know the sun had only been awaiting my departure to show his face?). I booked my ticket, whooped with joy, and then went to fetch my passport.

It was then than I noticed my passport was also a little under the weather. An accident with some vodka a few years back had finally taken its toll. Not on me - that horse is well and truly bolted - but my picture, or rather the plastic cover on the photo page, which was coming apart. Hmm, thinks I. They might think I´ve been tampering with it and not let me into Spain. I must ´fix it´. And so with skill, and care and cunning, I put a wee dob of fixative between plastic and card, wiped it clean, pressed it together and resolved to get a new one when I´m back from my trip. If it is wise to quit when one is ahead, it would have been wise to quit then. But for some reason I decided that the final touch was needed, and this involved pressing it with a hot iron. You snort do you? You are fully aware that this is a stupid thing to do, are you? So am I, now. I´m an expert on how misguided this is, and became so the moment I removed the piece of paper I had carefully lain across between iron and plastic (I´m stupid, but not that stupid), to be confronted by the above frightful spectacle. The rotting of a corpse in a wattery grave was not more horrible, as Wilde described the picture of Dorian Gray eaten by the leprosies of sin. I wouldn´t mind, but I hadn´t had half the fun he had to have a portrait like that. Worse, I had 4 days before my flight. It was now a Saturday morning, and I had a passport photo that looked like it had been painted by Edvard Munch. The only way the Spanish immigration were going to let me in is if I contracted a raging palsy before embarking. If the apolplexy I was then suffering didn´t get me first.

On enquiry, I discovered for replacement passports, the best they could manage was a week (and 109 quid). I´d need counter-signed photos by a respeatable person who´d known me more than 2 years (a small pool as my Dorian-like portrait suggests). I quickly relealised I was stuck in Britain. Beyond the sun beat down; I had booked my ticket, but here it looked likely I would have to stay. A week and my window would close. And I thought I was miserable before. Tbc...

Carping daily

Seize the day exhorts the poet-philosopher, but how can you when every day slips sloppily from your grasp and plops into a puddle of lost Time?

It may seem absurd to carp on about lost sunshine - and, believe me, I'm heartily sick of the sound of my own voice on this one, and would dearly like to put some of the love back in this blog - but sunshine is merely the symbol, life is the substance here. The sun marks our days, or would do if we could see it. The absence of the sun in what is supposed to be summer more truly reveals us to be mere walking shadows than if we could actually see them striding to meet us in the mornings and evading us come nightfall. There is more than fear in a handful of mud. It's fine for those philosophers, loafing around under the blue skies of Greece or Rome, to establish such principles. Their days were worth the seizing. Ours are put on hold. Life is what slips by as we are waiting for the weather to improve.

It'll clear up next week. No it won't. Next month will be better, so they lie. And before we know it, it's gone. The shops are already putting out their Christmas decorations, like so many nails in the coffin of summer. And so we mothball our hopes for another year, losing much more than a chance to wear the clothes we bought in spring. But that's OK, as they won't fit us now. We grow old, we grow old. To avoid the puddles we keep our trousers rolled. Sunshine is life - it is the source of all life -; but it has also become the light source of 'Lifestyle', a seductive package we've all bought into. The ads that will soon be sprinkled with fake snow fantasies of Dickensian delusion, have just finished selling us other desires, a-sparkle with fatuous golden promise to mock our most cherished dreams. Only marketeers believe in seasons in this country. So refuse. Refuse their Christmas. Resist their new season lies until they deliver what they sold us last season. If we can't have summer, then we shouldn't have to endure Christmas. Do so, and we might just resist Time itself. And although we can't make our sun stand still, or even visit us, yet we can make him run*.

*Robert Mighall, 41 years old, single, overworked and under-sunned is not having a good time of it. He apologises to the estate of T.S. Eliot, the shades of Andrew Marvell, Shakespeare, et al, the English language and the blogosphere, his long suffering mother, the weather men and the climate who mean him no personal ill; and finally his neighbours below, tormented by his demented tread and mournful wail, and ever-vigilant for the kick of a chair and the judder of a rope.

Season of drizzle and soggy cloudfulness

Well, that blessed season is with us. When we gather in the rosy harvest of our achievements of the year, look back with contentment, and forward with a rather wistful acceptance of the natural order of things, acknowledging that everything has its season, and there is a place for winter as well as joyous spring, and flaming summer. Or, in this case, look back with fuming indignation of being bilked of a summer for 2 years running, and forlorn foreboding of whether we will even be given the booby prize of a least a decent autumn. An Indian summer is the last glimmer of hope for this sun-denuded isle, and this year it is more desperately clung to than ever.

And it's not just me who thinks this. For once I can be assured that I'm not the only prophet of meteorological misery raging on the blasted heath of misguided expectation. Well, if I am, then at least there's a small chorus of Tom 'o Bedlams piping along with me. This week saw me elevated to the status of official pundit on the lousy summer, as the media finally woke up to what I've been banging on about for weeks now, and made this years shocking sunshine record a news item. Yes, I know it's the silly season for news. But this is the silliest version of the season I've ever seen essayed by the celestial architect. Must try harder. Yes, I got to whinge to the Scots, who've had an even worse time of it.
http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2436887.0.august_a_recordbreaking_washout_says_met_office.php

And then the other day, on the BBC News Magazine: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7513843.stm

I find some of the comments to the last piece (apart from the sun-haters, who are beyond belief), particularly encouraging. I have the small shred of comfort that I at least rant for the nation, and that I'm not the only one suffering from SAD. Not Seasonal Affective Disorder (which, bizarrely I don't have), but Sunshine Allocation Deficit, or Seasonal Atrocity Dementia, which probably amounts to the same thing. If there isn't a spirited attempt to deliver at least an Autumn, then I seriously fear for the nation's mental health.

I've demanded a summer, and lost the cause; I'd settle for an Autumn. I'm working on Keats, after all, and I need to experience the season of mists in all its mellow fruitfulness. The mists I can do without, but bring on the rest please. The irony is (irony being a brave euphemism for simply depressing), that Keats had suffered through three lousy summers in a row. 1816 has gone down in record as the worse summer ever for most of Europe and northern north America (I can't face verifying if last summer here was even worse), and the two after were not much better. He spent most of the spring of 1818 moaning about the rain in Devon, and then spent a summer wading through bogs and being drenched in Scotland. The next year, his final 'living year', was a distinct improvement. So when he wrote what has become the definitive poetic description of late summer, he was celebrating an anomaly, rather than evoking a standard. His poem - for me his finest, and one of the most perfect lyric offerings in the English canon - is a poet's version of 'Phew. What a scorcher!'. And he was simply squeezing the last mellow golden oozings out of a perfect late summer. It is our last hope for something like the same...