Black As Day

Much of my blogging endeavor has involved talk about the weather. And no wonder: I even named my blog after the weather! But what I really mean is that my blog has been a convenient channel for me to moan about Nordic winter, how long and horrible it is. Like therapy.

Surprisingly, my weather-related whiny posts have often gained more interaction in the comments section than many of the other posts that I’d actually crafted with love and care. I guess weather and climate are topics everyone has an opinion about.

Many a blog post on this site has ended with me and my dear readers from warmer countries debating which is worse: too cold weather or too warm weather. (If you ask me, I’m right of course: cold weather is much worse! And soon you won’t have to ask anyone because the climates are all becoming the same. How much of the planet will even be livable in a few decades – who knows. But I’ve enjoyed those debates.)

Back to winter: I’m still not a fan. My ideal climate would be the Mediterranean: Southern France, Northern Italy, Greece… all perfect. It’s not even the cold but the darkness, which loses its exotic charm when you actually have to live in it, month after month, year after year.

Fancy going for a picnic? Let’s wait 8 months! Want to take the kids out to play? Ah no, it looks like midnight, better stay inside. What about an evening walk? Are you crazy, it’s dark out there! Let’s just go to sleep early so we manage to get up for work again in the morning, and binge on vitamin D!

However… now that the apocalypse seems to truly have started with Australia burning and Greenland melting even faster than before, I feel petty about my complaints and I’ve decided to digress from my routine and not write a post complaining about winter this year. (I’ll just refer you to one from 2018, instead.)

And I offer my sincere concern for where the world is heading and cross my fingers and toes that our future generations will have homes, food, water, and health. Is humankind heading forward or backwards?

We were spoiled and enjoyed travel, fireworks, mobile phones and other devices, and carried on with these polluting activities like there was no worry for tomorrow. Was this the peak of all good times to be had? Is it already over – please convince me it isn’t!

Our winter over here on the opposite side of the globe from Australia (but not too far from Greenland) has been an unusually warm one*, meaning grey skies, lots of rain, and no snow (*the article says we’ll be “enjoying” warm weather today but fails to mention that it’s pouring rain with a wind of 10 m/s, so it’s actually not that enjoyable, in my opinion.)

Nature seems disoriented and unseasonal plants have been spotted here – I’ve even heard birdsong walking to work in the mornings, in the dark.

Ps. My next post will have a more positive tone, I promise!