It's been grim since August when it was either stupidly hot or stupidly wet. The back to school photos of the kids look like some moody Indie album cover of them hunched in their winter coats against the pouring rain and cold, and the weather stayed exactly the same, day in day out until we got the first round of floods in early November which did not bode well, yet still nearly 4 months on, the river has been on near constant flood alert, and the parks and fields are total quagmires.
The days are lengthening and easing out now but my SAD hit really early through October and November, and it was dark for school pick up by 2:30 weeks and weeks before the shortest day because the cloud cover was so heavy.
I'm normally pretty good at pushing myself out to go for walks, but we're at the stage of so much run-off for months that the paths through the park have gullies cutting deep into the foundation hardcore on the slope, the flat path is impassable with mud, and the pavements on the school run are thick with grit, mud, and streams running downhill from the woods near constantly. I haven't even dared to attempt my cross-country running routes which are probably knee deep.
I last mowed the lawn in early October when the sun came out for a few hours and even then, I pulverised the edges to mud when I turned. It's kept growing through the winter, but there's not a hope of squelching the lawn mower through it. The DCs have been out to play in the garden once in 5 months and the parks are the same.
It's been fucking awful weather for 6 months now.
In the last decade we seem to be getting a lot of phases like this where the weather seems to get stuck on the same cycle for weeks or months, and less variation through each season.