We all need summer’s healing magic our columnist’s addiction to sunshine

OUR BRILLIANT COLUMNIST ON HER SUNSHINE ADDICTION

“We all need summer’s healing magic”

As I was born in July I love summer. Actually, I was three weeks premature and jaundiced, so I spent my first days on Earth in an incubator under a heat-lamp. It must have set my internal thermometer for life, not to mention giving me a deeply misleading picture of the climate of my native South Wales. Basking in the rays of that lamp, baby Allison must have thought that she’d been delivered to a tropical paradise. Little did the innocent baby know that beyond the walls of the maternity hospital lay the world capital of rain. I don’t think I felt truly warm again until I went to the Greek islands 20 years later.

Who knows, maybe I’ve been trying to recapture that early heat ever since. I need sun like a plant needs water, a craving that, weirdly, has intensified as I get older. When I’m on holiday in the small fishing village I go to in Turkey, lying by the turquoise sea I imagine that I can actually feel my bones soaking up the golden vitamin D. It soothes all the twinges of middle-age, giving me a profound sense of wellbeing and, even if only for a few days, restoring my youthful self. Plus, the sun tops up my highlights for free. (As my annual appointments with the colourist now cost the same

as a small car, that’s quite a saving.)

A couple of years ago, I was feeling just awful and I went to see the doctor. After listening to my woes, he said that I had all the classic symptoms of SAD. Low mood, an inappropriate longing for mojitos in March, anxiety, addiction to Dove self-tanning products and wearing FitFlops until late September. SAD, or seasonal affective disorder to give it its full title, is a fancy way of saying, “Sorry, madam, you live in Britain under a sky the colour of saucepan for half the year.”

Unsurprisingly, according to the most recent study, one in three people in the UK suffers from SAD, with women 40% more likely than men to experience a condition that is sometimes known as “winter depression”.

Weather really does affect how we feel. In the colder, darker months, we are more likely to experience fatigue, anxiety and even low self-esteem. Turns out that if you want a sunny disposition, it helps to have sunshine. So my longing for baking-hot holidays by an infinity pool is not just mindless hedonism, it’s medicinal, isn’t it?

Just to complicate things, I live with a man who was born in December and who loves winter. He hates the heat, which literally brings him out in a rash. Years ago, our travel agent, Philip, diagnosed holiday incompatibility syndrome (HIS). “Allison wanted to go to the Caribbean and Anthony wanted to go on a slow train to Poland,” he said with a grin. “So they compromised. And went to the Caribbean.”

In the early years of our relationship, I ignored the irritable signs of HIS and insisted on taking him on a trip to the South of France, where I actually had to explain to him the principles of lying down on a sunlounger.

“Yes, all right, but what do you do then?” he said, baffled. After trying the prone thing for a few minutes, he got up crossly and started looking for fossils on a nearby hillside. I finally gave up trying to impose my summer-loving preferences following a week in Barbados. While other people were having fun on the beach, Himself parked himself in the shade and read a novel. By Dostoevsky. I mean, Jeffrey Archer or Robert Harris, maybe. But a Russian existentialist? That was a passive-aggressive reaction by a winter lover if ever I saw one. In future, I would take holidays in the sun with the kids, with friends or even by myself. And leave him at home to watch the cricket. In the pouring rain, if he was lucky.

Every so often, some keen new education minister will suggest that the summer holidays are too long because children forget things. Hence, the summer holiday should be much shorter. “You bloody fool!” I cry. Stressedout, over-examined kids, pale as veal, should be allowed to forget things for a few weeks and to feel the sun on their skin. Each and every one of us needs summer’s healing magic.

To try and combat my SAD, I bought this special light. It arcs over my desk and does its best to recreate those early mornings in Turkey, with the little boats chug-chugging out across the harbour and the air shimmering with the possibility of the heat to come. It’s definitely an improvement on Britain in February, but it doesn’t cause instant happiness like the real thing.

So, recently, I took a decision. Using a small legacy, I’m going to put down a deposit on my very own place in the sun. I want whatever years I have left to be full of light. Like that incubator I began life in, more than half a century ago, my place will be tiny but gloriously warm. Bring me sunshine? Oh, yes please. Baby, you’re going back where you belong. w&h

“I can feel my bones soak up the vitamin D”