I am sometimes a prey to Seasonal Affective Disorder and suspect I’m not the only one. I also suspect I’m not the only one to blame it for bad moods: It’s too hot; It’s too cold; It’s too bright; It’s too dark. The change from chirruping sunshine to a blank grey drizzle has not been long enough yet for the drabness to invade my spirits. In fact a yesterday spent beside the log stove finishing Barbara Kingsolver’s ‘Unsheltered’ seemed fully justified and gave me license not to engage in the mandated exercise. But the morale is a little crushed, so instead of watching those old episodes of ‘The IT Crowd’ and ‘Father Ted’, we have embarked upon the challenge of catching up on three series of ‘Killing Eve.’
For another nostalgic revisiting of previous entertainment I have been re-reading some of Garrison Keillor’s ‘Lake Wobegon’ radio monologues. “Welcome to Lake Wobegon where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” This could be Crich! Keillor always started each episode with “It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon,” which is rather true of Crich as well at the moment. Two extracts struck me as pertinent today:
“It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. We got a good rain on Wednesday, a long soaking rain good for field and garden and lawn. It was dry, no rain for a month” (from Goodbye to the Lake)
and
“People have been feeling low since the Swedish flu struck. It’s the usual flu with chills, fever, diarrhea, vomiting, achiness, and personal guilt, but it’s accompanied by an overpowering urge to put things in order. Before you collapse into bed, you iron the sheets. Before you vomit, you plan your family’s meals for the upcoming week. (from The Speeding Ticket)
This morning was bleak by any standards with the air temperature flirting with freezing point, with the heavy Rab coat being resurrected, with gloves and snoods and cloth cap being dragged out from their summer hibernation. People walked muffled, hooded and heads down, their normally cheerful greetings muzzled by scarves. You may remember from your days poring over Eng. Lit., the term ‘Pathetic Fallacy’ when the weather reflects mood and action. Our pigeon certainly knows the term, excluded from the bird table it sat bedraggled on the fence looking particularly pathetic. Zooming home-schooling one grandchild rose above the dreariness, one didn’t. We walked out early into a dingy murk where the birdsong was muted and a dismal sky hung low, so low that the top of Crich Stand was swathed in cloud and the empty street of the Tramway Village looked sad, forlorn and abandoned. If last week’s sunshine had dazzled us so we couldn’t see what Covid life was like beyond this moated village, this week’s colourless skies suck us into a stark reality. The Tramway Village, a happy heart of the village normally beating away, frozen shut and derelict; only one dispirited customer queuing outside the Butcher’s. But further afield the overwhelming grief of the care homes, beyond that the refugee camps, the continent of Africa waiting, trembling. Perhaps we needed this washed-out morning to remind us.
This evening, further depleting next winter’s log store, we sat beside the stove and watched the streaming of the National Theatre’s ‘Twelfth Night’. With its uncomfortable blend of fantasy and realism, mirth and cruelty, love and loneliness, it was a fitting closing of the curtains on another day of isolation and lockdown.