9th September, wet, cold and grey.  Yesterday was sunny and warm, the last day of summer I suppose.  My hatred of the endless winter perhaps stems from my working days, leaving home in the dark and not getting back until it was dark again.

There is a line in Ibsen’s play, Ghosts: “The sun, the sun. Give me the sun.” that’s how I feel.

The summer of 2018 was marvelous; long and hot. The summer of 2019 has been pay-back time. Yes, there were sunny spells, but also record-breaking rainfall. I feel that I have been robbed.

Last winter, I had a blood test which showed I was deficient in vitamin D and for the first time in my life I had to take a vitamin supplement. As a vegetarian, the cause may have been dietary, but the lack of exposure to sunshine could not have helped.

I don’t know that I suffer from SAD, seasonal affective disorder, but I certainly do have black-dog days in winter, although never in summer.

I find autumn is a dismal time of year, promising nothing but imminent winter and that miserably materialistic Christmas season; the puritans were right to ban its celebration.

I come back to life and hope in the spring; new life and the promise of some heat.

Summer is best of all, with its long hours of daylight, rich greenery and flowers and potential for the out-door life and it is crowned by the sublime BBC Proms. The Final Night of the Proms is next Saturday; all nostalgia and patriotism for some; all sadness at the end of summer for me.

At my age, as autumn closes in, I find myself hoping that I will live to see another spring and summer.