I don’t really understand why I’m still on Twitter, a mouse hopefully pressing the button that used to dispense treats, but which now only dispenses electric shocks. One reason is that I like the helpful reminders people give – that the clocks are changing, say, or there are only three days left for Christmas postage. Given staring at the internet has eaten 94% of my brain, I am grateful to outsource this basic life admin to civic-minded souls. I especially appreciate it when someone issues a heads-up for hay fever sufferers at the end of winter – when the trees are hatching their plot to kill me but haven’t acted on it yet – to start taking antihistamines.
So consider this my contribution: summer haters, it might not be particularly warm yet, but the season is here and that’s why you’re feeling bad. Baffled by the sudden onset of foreboding and formless dread? Mired in blank inertia? Wondering what’s wrong with you, because someone said it was “beautiful weather” and you upset them by retorting something angry about the desperate lack of rain, starving blue tit chicks and various other seasonal downers? I’ve been there, too, and you’re not losing your mind: it’s seasonal affective disorder (Sad).
You can get Sad in summer: the NHS says so, so it must be true. I realised my brain goes into summer meltdown a decade ago after spending weeks stuck at my desk, unable to work, hyperventilating. It has worsened as the climate crisis deepens, my once grey and pleasant northern home baking in terrifying 40C heat, like it did last year.
But at least I know what’s happening now, and that means I can tell you. Of course, there’s no antihistamine for summer dysphoria. All I can counsel is getting a fan and a season ticket to your nearest icily air-conditioned cinema, and practising acceptance. You will be the shade to everyone’s else’s light; the trailing goth in the happy, pastel-clad family group, the wasp at the picnic. And that’s OK. As each year sizzles less forgivingly, I suspect our misunderstood band of summer misanthropes will only grow.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
