George Devo’s weekly column on life in the capital, published every Monday morning…
It’s a cold, crisp, bright, spring Sunday morning. For the first time in what feels like, although almost certainly isn’t if you want to be meteorologically pedantic, weeks the sky isn’t grey.
The sky acts as a pastel blue background for the warm rays of sunlight beaming through my window, heating the desk at which I’m writing this column.
I left my girlfriend’s East London flat shortly before 8am this morning, and the streets around my home, in South London’s Kennington neighbourhood, seemed decidedly different to the last couple of weeks.
Calmer, happier, more content. Even the 1960s council flats behind my 1950s estate – large grey slabs so drab they’d make Soviet Moscow look like Disneyland – felt a little cheerier.
I love snow, I don’t mind rain and can even enjoy storms if I’m not the highest, best conducting object in my immediate surroundings. I’m one of those irritants who pick winter as their favourite season. However, finally, I’m sick of it.
Four months of London winter has made even my stubborn contrarianism cave in. This might be hard to say about any part of the United Kingdom – aside from its coastal, arcade and candy floss filled hubs – but I think London’s a summer city.
Think about it… it’s too southern to get proper, South-Yorkshire snow and, with outdoor activities robbed from you by limited daylight and intolerable temperatures, indoor activities (e..g, drinking, drinking and drinking) are simply too expensive to enjoy as frequently (which is a huge shame as I absolutely adore pubs – but let’s save that for another column).
I first dived into 9-to-5 life in the capital in the tepid warmth of late June 2024, and got used to it amidst the more intense, constant heat of July and August.
I was living at my girlfriend’s student house in Kentish Town, North London, sharing with five other permanent residents plus another kipping on the sofa. For the two and a half months I stayed there, I had the stress of a new job to deal with, and spent eight hours a day feeling incompetent, only to return to a two-storey flat packed with eight people that got unreasonably warm very quickly.
It was a recipe for disaster, yet it wasn’t. It was lovely, and my memories are halcyon.
You could argue it was the atmosphere of the Euros at the time or discovering that my partner and I cohabited well together. Both helped, but the main reason, in hindsight, was neither of those things, it was simpler.
It was just sunny.
Now, it’s a Sunday afternoon for me, and a Monday morning for you, so I’m not going to bore you with an argument, burden you with stats or testimony confirming this correlation between wellbeing and weather. Neither of us, reader, have the time.
Instead I’ll leave you with this.
If you’re feeling miserable and can’t place the reason, if you’re looking enviously at damp picnic benches or empty beer gardens, just think that one day soon you too might be sitting at your desk, or lying in your bed, and you’ll feel a calming warmth buzz across your skin and look up to see the same blue sky and amber sunlight bursting through your window that came through mine.
To paraphrase a fictional man in a wooly coat, summer is coming. We won’t have to wait too long.
