Nice Weather

A fail-safe conversation opener; "Nice weather".

As I write this the sky is blue and the sun is shining. I feel a lot better about that. Statistics on Seasonal Affective Disorder are a bit nebulous but I dare say most of us have been affected by the amount of sunlight we get at one time or another. Of course there is physical proof that a lack of sunlight can be bad for your health, the most obvious is a vitamin D deficiency, sometimes embodied in Rickets which is caused by lack of the vitamin due to poor nutrition and a failure to metabolise it. The disease still occurs in Britain, predictably in the North and poorer areas.

But given a reasonably healthy diet, why does low natural light cause us to be miserable?
Nordic countries traditionally have high rates of suicide but the statistics do not give a clear view of what is going on and clearly there are a number of factors in the epidemiology. Suicide rates in Greenland are high, but the rate peaks...in the summer! And not everybody in California is deliriously happy.

It begs a question. Well it does for me. When am I most happy? I am most happy in the bosom of my family. Elsewhere I have been at my happiest at the helm of a sailing boat. There was a point when (forgive the Jonathan Livingstone Seagull moment) I felt at one with the elements; in essence I forgot myself and became a part of the wind and the water.

I can remember taking a narrowboat from Bath to London during one of the coldest, wettest starts of the season. I felt miserable at times, but never depressed and never far away from the lush promise of a hot bath and a feeling of having achieved something.