Pagan Times

The Summer Solstice is here. I awoke to a sky of egg-shell blue, trailed with the odd wisp of hurrying clouds. To some, this might signal a mood of optimism and joy but for me, it's a harbinger of darkness. You can accuse me of possessing the half-empty-glass syndrome if you like (today, you'd be right), but the Solstice brings no pleasure for me. It's downhill all the way from here; down towards the dismal days of December, just around the corner now.

I once spent a few weeks in a place close to the equator and here there are no such influences to swing our moods. The days and nights are of equal length all year round. There's something rather comforting in the predictability of that – no lingering sunsets, no loitering dawns. At the end of the day there's the sun's rush to get the day's business done as it plunges hastily over the horizon in a matter of moments only; twelve hours later and the night's brooding blackness ends with just as little warning when this great golden orb pushes itself into the sky almost as fast as you can blink.

In such a place there are no varied seasons to make us feel wistful or to make us yearn for another time. Nothing to make us fear the encroaching web of Jack Frost; no roseate fingers of the dawn to give us false hopes.

In Norway – as in many places – they celebrate the solstice with the nearby "St. Hans Night" which, despite its religious associations, is in fact a secular festival marked by huge bonfires, alcohol, and bacchanalian all-night parties. I once spent such a rioutous night on a beach in Kristiansand in the south of the country; a party of enormous proportions attended, strangely enough, by representatives of the British Navy.

But today I feel only the heaviness of my heart. I know this is wrong and that I should welcome the light that today - the longest day - brings with it, but I think we're all allowed at least one day of maudling despair. I'll be back to normal tomorrow, you'll see.