Savouring Daylight Hours
The not-so-subtle shift into Greenwich Mean Time
And just like that, it’s happened. You would think that after 34 years I’d get used to it, but I’m still like, “Wait, what? Can we go back and play that again? I must have missed something.”
Because suddenly I turn to him and say, “Oh god, we can’t go swimming in the river after work anymore.”
“I did tell you. We needed to take as many of those opportunities as we could, because before you know it -”
“I thought you meant the weather and the water temperature, not this.”
“Yep.”
I’ve been making autumn bouquets this year. On my bike rides home from work, I would gather dead bits of cow parsley and other gothic-looking sprigs of what were once flowers. I put them all together and they made really decorative, stark tributes to my favourite season. I was inspired to do so by my mum. I love them. When I cycle home now though, by 5:30pm those spiky stalks in the hedges are just flashes in my bike lights.
Next time I run home, I will not cut through the park and beside the lake. I won’t gallop beside sheep and then stop to check on the dragonflies. I will have to take the “winter route” and go alongside the road. I didn’t know I’d already had my last blast of the “summer route.” I didn’t hold it dear for one last time.
None of this change is particularly bad, no, not at all. It’s just that it suddenly affects quite significant hours of the day. The week before the clocks changed, I went for a run in the early morning and needed a head torch for almost the entire duration. My head torch died and I nearly ran into a cow. In that respect, the lighter mornings are a bit of a relief.
The sunrise is at a civilised hour now. For me, in autumn and spring, the sunset is too. When I get home at nightfall, I close the curtains. I light my candle. I pour a glass of wine, if it’s that sort of day. I wind down to sleep better.
I like cycling in the dark. I sing into the night sky, loudly, badly and happily.
Him and I will wild swim for as long as we can bear the temperature, it will just be in the daytime at weekends. I might - one day - dare to go in the early morning, but we’ll see.
I’m glad he encouraged me to make the most of those light evenings. I don’t, really, left to my own devices. But we went for walks, ate dinner outside, got on our bikes. He regularly told me that he was sat outside long after dusk. I would sit on my doorstep, usually writing pieces for this very blog as the sun dipped below the building opposite.
The next time I see those spiky stalks in the hedges of an evening, they will again be recognisably cow parsley. There will be splashes of white, green, and yellow. There will be abundant growth visited by butterflies, bees and crickets. I will not pick them for a bouquet.
The river will hold the chill of the winter and I will seek sunny days in which to be warmed by the sun before plunging into the icy depths. I will think of early autumn, and look forward to dips in water warmed by the summer.
And I will go home in the fading light of the day, making the most of it before the clocks change, before we get to do it all again.
In other news:
Last week, three Belgian runners set a new record at the Big Dog Backyard Ultra. It’s kind of a complicated event to explain - basically runners complete a 4.167-mile loop every hour on the hour until all but one runner retires. It goes on for days. The new record is 110 hours even though technically, by finishing altogether, nobody won. I wrote a piece about it for iRunFar - check it out here.