I Opened My Eyes in the Middle of October

As I type, my gaze flicks between the words I am writing, and the downcast view from my window that tints my room grey. My fingers are pressing the keys as quickly as the rain is falling - rapidly but thinly, like a multitude of sharp little needles. The needles are so thin that when my focus shifts, the rain turns into a drizzly mist. The air is calm and silent, reminiscent of a crisp October evening. 

Not quite the description you would expect considering we are a week into July, when evenings should be muggy and thick with mosquitoes, and we don't mind too much because the heat will soon enough disappear and we'll be back to wishing for long warm nights. 

There is some serious pathetic fallacy going on in the UK right now. A few weeks ago we hit 100 days of lockdown - a number that was never anticipated back in March when lots of people were thinking they'd still be able to fly out to Marbs at the end of May after Boris Johnson had single-handedly eradicated the virus. With each week of lockdown that slips by, so a downcast mood spreads across the UK like the grey clouds through my window. Realistically, if we all had time machines to just take us straight to January 2021, to a date that is hopefully looking a little less covid-y and a little more mingle-y, we wouldn't have missed out on much more of a summer than we're missing now. Whilst more and more summer activities, like going to the pub garden or catching a flight abroad, are slowly becoming allowed again, there is no sense of normality attached.   

But even though the weather has been so dreary and downcast for the past week, maybe it's been a blessing in disguise. The more grey days, the less mass gatherings, the less pub garden trips, the less beach crowds - the less chance of a second wave. We can also forget the pandemic for a day, because now it's the weather stopping us from hosting a big garden BBQ or going on a beachy day out - not the risk of contracting the virus. 

I am really not a sun worshipper anyway, so I never mind too much when another summer of sunniness but not stickiness rolls around. But there is just something about the weather tonight that really makes me feel as though I blinked and opened my eyes in the middle of October.