4.15pm and it's pitch dark - where has the light gone?

[PineappleDanish]

Hate this time of year. It started getting dark around 2.30pm. Pitch dark by 4.15pm.

Won't be daylight again until 8.30am tomorrow morning. It's lashing rain outside and is forecast to do similar for most of the week.

Winter can fuck off. Roll on the Solstice and at least the nights start getting shorter again.

Oh god nooooooooo
Not
Fucking
HYGGE
just no

Userxx how can you hate the word cosy?? Do you not like being cosy? What word do you use instead?

Love it! Cosy, fairy lights, no pressure to be "doing things", no sweating or glaring sunshine 😊

I have a theory that the "hot chocolate, warm blankets" romantics are all living much further south than the "fuck this for a game of soldiers" crowd.

I'm not as far north as some but I'm in Yorkshire so it's dark fairly early and the mornings are dark (and no, I don't think we should have permanent bst because my children would then have to walk to school in the dark in the winter and wouldn't be safe) but I do like winter. I like feeling safe and sheltered in the house. I like coming home to a comfortable house after having been out in the crap weather and cold. Yes it's been raining a lot and there's mud everywhere but we've had some sunshine.

I hate being too hot. I hate it when it's stiflingly hot and there's no way to cool down. I hate it being so hot that I cant sleep and can't eat. Winter is so much more comfortable than the boiling hot summers that we've had recently.

We have an open coal fire and ghats lovely

Right so we’re all just sat on our sofas from 4pm all ‘cosy’ and ‘snuggly’ for 6 hours! So happy that the pressure to go out and do something is off! How boring and lazy!

I sit down (as many do) at about 9pm. I’ve got to walk the dog and I’d quite like to exercise and I have to drive kids to sports clubs etc etc. All in the pissy rainy dark. And this then goes on and on for months.

How lazy must you be to enjoy lying under a blanket every night for months. Awful.

Boiling hot summer...in Yorkshire? I must have blinked.

Yes it wasn’t boiling hot this year. Well it was for about 2 days in July. You must be mistaken with last year’s heatwave. I had the heating on in August.

I used to live in a hot country with no real seasons, other than it being hotter or less hot, where it got dark at the same (early) time all year round, and it was unspeakably depressing. Sameness, even if you think it would be lovely to live somewhere perennially hot, dry and sunny, is depressing over time. No autumn leaves, no crisp cold, no rain (it rained twice in the year and a half I lived there), no frost, no lengthening days and short summer nights, no spring flowers, no new foliage etc.

It has been incredibly wet and windy here, but I’ve never since then lost my appreciation of variety in weather and the seasons, even a wet December where the fields are so clayey they’re almost un walkable.

Pineapple danish

@rhubarbcrumbles I would be on that plane immediately. But unfortunately it's not practical for a whole lot of reasons. Once the kids are grown and left home I'm going to be one of those people who decamps to Tenerife between November and February each year.

It's not about heat. It's about light. Or lack of it.

It’s daylight till about 6-6-3pm
Here in los cris
We trek here every March October and December to extend summer and shorten winter

We’ve had a cloudy spell today but the sun came out at 4 and we ate an excellent Sunday roast on a restaurant balcony outside
Sitting outside now with a glass of cider

It’s a bit cool but beats having our home like Dante’s inferno just to stay warm
I think Christmas in a warm country is a brilliant idea ... and it’s very scaled down here
So win win

@Dowser Will you be staying for Christmas Day?

Could you move?

Cosy isn't the same as warm. Or comfortable.

This isn't the same as hating the heat. Sometimes we get a hot summer. Mostly we don't. Mostly we get a few OK days and a couple more of scorchers.

But the dark nights from the start of November to the end of January are guaranteed. Every year. Three months of dark. 8 hours of daylight. 16 of darkness. FOR THREE MONTHS.

Manon black beak
How the hell people in Scandinavia cope I'll never know.

They are all here ... in the canary isles
The Viking’s have invaded
Here on tenerife there’s a Norwegian and a Swedish church
They even have their own boat... the ragnarok

Sweden and Norway are officially empty until April

I don't remember the exact dates but there have been plenty of times over the last few summers where it has been unbearably hot and I hate it. I don't mind the cold because it's easy enough to warm up with a jumper or a pair of longjohns underneath normal clothing. Cooling down is all but impossible though.

If it hasn't been hot it's been sticky, muggy and still and those are the days when the ants come out of the skirting boards in our house and from the cracks in the path in the garden in their hundreds and short of spraying god knows how many chemicals all over the place there's nothing we can do about it.

When the evenings are light , I get in from work. I go for a walk or a run , potter in the garden, life is so much nicer.
Dark evenings , I still run but it’s not so nice. I mainly come home and put my pyjamas on. So dull and anti-social

It hasn’t been hot and sticky for months and months on end though. (I wish).

It is guaranteed that it will be dark and cold for at least 3/4 months.

But the dark nights from the start of November to the end of January are guaranteed. Every year. Three months of dark. 8 hours of daylight. 16 of darkness. FOR THREE MONTHS. You know it happens every year and how long it will last but spending 3 months complaining about it isn't going to change it, is it? Short of moving, there's nothing you can do about it so you might as well make the best of it.

Do you think perhaps you're living in the wrong country? Cos that's kinda how things work here

@OverByYer that's it exactly. These dark nights are so bloody boring, I hate being stuck indoors.

26 days and we will be back to where we are now. Then it is getting lighter.

I really need to go and stare at daylight for a bit.

Permanent summertime does nothing to increase the amount of daylight we have. It just wouldn't get light until nearly 10am, up here in the North and would still be dark by afternoon rush hour.

I'm always both in awe of the extremes we get - just about 55 degrees North, here, and hating how dark it is on an overcast day. Then again, it never gets pitch black in June, which is a PITA with small kids but lovely with a glass of wine in the garden!

Been trying to find an infographic which shows the variation with latitude. I couldn't find the one I wanted but this one is almost as hypnotic. The UK is pretty much between 50 and 60 degrees, so the variation from down south to the northern tip of Scotland is quite dramatic.
preview.redd.it/gd995fa5d2q21.gif?format=mp4&s=0490ec83ce2a09cdf2df8ddd438cee136f2fce60

Pretty far north here and it feels like it’s been dark ALL DAY with the pouring rain and black clouds. Walked the dogs in the dark this morning and walked them again in the dark in the evening. It’s vile.

Draw the curtains, put the lights on, and think about something else.

I know there's nothing we can do about dark nights. Just pointing out that it's unfair to compare it to summer, as we never ever get three months straight of scorching weather and no rain.