I think about the sun the way Homer Simpson thinks about his hair. I get up every morning, and though I know it won’t be there, I still check. There is always hope. Except, something peculiar happened last weekend. The sun came out. And then again, day after day, as if it just cracked the concept. And with it, everything and nothing had changed.
Londoners are starved of sunshine. The capital enjoys roughly 1,630 hours per annum, which sounds a lot until you learn that there are 8,760 hours in a year. For context, Phoenix, Arizona basks in 3,900 hours. This is not a perfect comparison. For one you’d have to live in Phoenix, which as I understand is comprised of equal parts malls, golf courses and anthropogenic drought. But maybe I’d be happy for a while.
Some people know how to find the best local restaurants or the cleanest WCs. I know where to unearth sunshine. Early morning? London Fields, with the dog walkers and new parents. Late in the evening? There’s a slice of Haggerston Park, by the wall that backs on to Sebright Primary School, which on a good summer’s night catches the sun until the last drop.
Having spent all my life on this small, shadowless island, never in receipt of much sunshine, how can I miss it so much? I concede, if the Waterloo and City line vanished, I wouldn’t notice for years. It is sunshine’s very rarity that drives up the value. It’s the one-bed flat in Zone 2 for less than £1,000 per month of meteorological conditions, if you will.
We live in a country where the Government unironically advises its tired, poor huddled masses yearning for sunlight to take vitamin D supplements in autumn and winter. The absence of sunshine leads to lower levels of serotonin which has been linked to feelings of depression. I’ve not yet purchased a SAD lamp, but only because I resent having to pay for something that should come free from the sky.
Yes, all life on our planet emanates from our sun. Its presence shouldn’t be the determining factor of a day, and yet it so often is. No, it doesn’t end war or vanquish viruses. And the national cricket team still can’t bat. But it elevates life’s routines. The walk to the station becomes a breeze, the lunchtime sandwich steeplechase an opportunity for window shopping. Putting the bins out remains a drag but hey, at least it’s not raining.
The sun heightens the senses too. It is nature’s original Instagram filter. Instead of ignoring the outside world, we suddenly yearn to be part of it. As I walked through Hyde Park yesterday, football matches broke out, picnics were laid, one couple was joyously dancing to a drug I like to call sunshine (although it was possibly something harder).
And sure, the forecast for next week is, well, late March. Brace for the return of mild and grey, punctuated by a hailstorm forecast for Thursday, by which time this will feel like a distant memory. But the sun will come back. It has to.
Rishi’s photo ops are running on empty
I ONCE drove a Kia Soul from New York to Los Angeles, so this is nothing against the good people of the Hyundai Motor Group. But it came as a surprise to no one that Rishi Sunak, believed to be the wealthiest person in the Commons, had merely borrowed the Kia Rio with which he was photographed filling up from a Sainsbury’s employee.
The largely negative response to the spring statement has less to do with Sunak’s riches, and more with the paucity of help he gave to low-income households facing spiralling bills, stagnant wages and sub-inflation benefit rises. The staged picture harks back to David Cameron who, as Leader of the Opposition, was snapped cycling to Parliament — followed by a car carrying his papers. That image was still being brought up, unprompted, in focus groups years later. Inauthenticity sticks.
