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....

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...