AS YET TO BE

Tag: 2026

  • when the sun strikes me like a gong

    It’s a cold day today, but in a spring way, and I love you.

    (24th March, 1937; Letters to Véra by Vladimir Nabokov)

    The slog of January to very early Feb was one, for us, submerged in greyness. The first month of the year seemed to last forever, yet with no real sense of the days passing by. Just fog!

    Our vitamin D levels dwindled as there was absolutely no visible sun; those select mornings when it did make a short appearance saw us all vastly uplifted.

    It was a Valentine’s Day visit to Whitby with family that I only properly remember a completely blue sky… I have a fond recollection of a couple sitting in a bus stop, sunbathing in five-degree cool. Romantic!

    Blue sky through Whitby Abbey

    As I experience more years (having recently (reluctantly) turned twenty-five), I grow increasingly impatient for spring’s arrival. Not just for the daffodils, lambs and chocolate eggs, but more so for the longer days and increased likelihood of sunshine. With longer evenings on their way, I feel less inclined to convince myself I’m running out of time.

    Over winter, I wilt – a plant without what it needs – I’ve come to find the transition back into green, yellows and pinks more and more welcome. Everything shifts, in a flowery sort of way (colour comes back).

    A usual indication of the change in season is our cat basking on the garden patio. She’ll only do this when the conditions are just right, and it seems that today the stone is at optimum temperature:

    Cali in the afternoon sun

    This is handy, as it often lets us know whether it’s suitable to let the tortoise out for a stroll too.

    Barley doing her yoga on the patio tiles

    A bit of natural sun makes all the difference to a heat lamp for her, which I’m sure we can all agree with (I’m terribly anti-Big-Light these days). I don’t know if tortoises contain or produce serotonin, but their heat-seeking (survival) instincts resonate strongly with me.

    It may sound extreme, but things simply feel more doable when the Sun is out. I have all the instincts of a hibernating animal, who has been cooped up much too long and all of a sudden feels much lighter (in more senses than one).

    Perhaps this is just a reflection on my grasping at any sense of optimism nowadays, if merely a bit of warmth through my joints: life feels that bit more liveable, I don’t feel half as unwell as the cloudy day before, and for some reason my body works a bit better than usual. I feel suddenly inspired, as though I’ve quite literally had some light switched on somewhere in my brain.

    Seeing Project Hail Mary at the weekend (enjoy it!) seems to have inspired me to think about our Sun and perhaps worship it a bit more than before. This, and a particularly glare-y bus journey home.

    I suggest we all pause and bask (responsibly) for a bit.

    (Title taken from ‘I have to tell you’ by Dorothea Grossman)

  • On the bright, and less so

    Durham, 2023 – surprisingly not in black & white!

    The passing of another year and plunge back into dark nights and crisp white mornings fills me with the inherent (albeit mouse or moomin-like) longing to hibernate.

    I should have an affinity with snow, having been born on a particularly blizzardous February night, yet creaky joints and a fear of slippy ground means I much prefer snowfall through the window when I’ve nowhere else to be.

    Snow at home, early last year

    There is something about waking up to a world transformed when there has been snow overnight. The landscape is suddenly limited to a minimal colour palette: black, white, then the palest pink and blue… It is funny how somewhere that can be once so green (that being the rolling hills of home for me) can appear so flat.

    Peter Brook is one of my family’s favourite artists, and at this time of year I find myself inside his paintings.

    Peter Brook, Sheep Coming In (December)

    Whilst every natural instinct insists I bundle up, away from the cold, I’m usually unluckily tied to commitments in places unaffected by my particular snow cloud. This happened this week, where everyone’s anticipation of a snow day from Storm Goretti ended in a disappointing Friday morning: arriving at work, it was as though not a single bit of ice remained!

    Still, the little hill upon which I reside (much like Peppa Pig) was a snowglobe.

    Durham snow day in 2023

    Approaching springtime and the return of all good things (namely light and colour), I am reminded of when I lived in Durham and walked my daily walk to the library to work on my third-year dissertation.

    I can’t remember exactly when I wrote most of this poem, but I will include it below.

    I wish everyone well as we start 2026 full of the usual mix of optimistic hesitancy. May you hear from me a bit sooner than before.

    Brighter days soon!