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...

How many suns does it take to stage a scientific debate?

Last night I appeared at an event called The Sunshine Fix at the DANA Centre, in London's Science Museum. I was there to cover the cultural and historical aspects, while real scientific experts explained the physiological and psychological reasons behind our love for the sun. There was quite a good turn out, which was split into two groups and rotated around we experts.

In my groups it was all sweetness and light. Ours was a happy sun, welcomed by many who shared my rather disgruntled view of our stingy sunshine quota. And it wasn't just me inciting them. I shared the floor with a nice chap called Lance Workman, an evolutionary psychologist from Bath Spa University who has been researching SAD. I didn't know this, but the UK has the highest rate of (self-reported) SAD sufferers in the world. Even worse than those at higher latitudes. We also have the most unpredictable weather. To two are not unrelated. We are also known as a nation of whingers (as was pointed out to general agreement), so maybe we have to take this with a pinch of salt. If there was a pathological condition we could self-report on grumbling about late trains, or tutting when people push in front of us in queues, we'd no doubt display epidemic occurrences of this. Yet everyone seemed to have a positive view of the sun, or if they didn't they kept schtum.

When the groups came together, and I caught the tail-end of the other experts' session, another sun came into view. A sun of death, to be feared and avoided, and against which we must all protect ourselves or suffer the consequences. An American dermatologist was holding forth by satellite on the perils of sun-exposure. The smiles soon fell from out faces. Could this be the same sun I wondered to myself? The sun of micro-molecular mysteries revealing itself in mutated forms deep beneath the dermis, to be anathematised by the white-coated ones (the counterparts of those who encouraged us to sunbathe in the first place not 60 years ago)? Or the sun I could still see lighting up the smiles of those enjoying a South Kensignton summer evening as they dawdled past the Centre?