london in january

Every. Day.

I tried. I really did.

I'm admitting defeat, I've succumbed to the January Monster and I'm depressed as fuck.

I've tried really hard not to let winter beat me. Keep my feelings about winter in England positive.
Keep myself afloat basically, even with Saffa friends in town at the moment.

It's all gone to a ball of shit.

Back from days of wonderful peace and solitude, to being rudely awoken by an alarm at what feels like the middle of the night. So incredibly dark, still knackered and then commuting to work on festering trains.

A few weeks ago I LOVED London. Right now I hate it.

This is normal, well as normal as it has been for me over the last 2.5 years of living here. Most Saffas will tell you the same thing. January and February are the months where this city drives them to the brink of mental, mostly thanks to a severe vitamin D shortage.

London is extremes. There are times, like now where all I crave and want is to get.the.fuck.out.of.here. Everyone else at home is enjoying a long, endless summer involving swimming pools and cold wine. Here, everyone is grumpy, it's dark, we're all on a health binge to lose the stodge we ate at Christmas. And I crave sun like I crave the cigarettes I am no longer smoking. More so, in fact.

It's not that I need to go home as such; I'll be flying back there in four months.

I just need to go somewhere for three, maybe four days to expose my rump to some real, actual sunlight. Not a fucking desk lamp. And/or heinous fluorescent lighting. I hadn't seen the sun for non-stop 13 days until New Year's Day. We awoke to a a gorgeous, crisp sunny day. The sunlight is so pale, that it doesn't really warm you - it just makes you psychologically feel better. Especially after 13 days of endless grey, darkness and rain.

The Brit doesn't feel it like I do. When a bunch of us Saffas were bemoaning the constant grey, he kind of sits there slightly perplexed. For the beginning of time, from the start of his life, he's been exposed to this kind of climate. This is what he's used to, and he's just not affected as much.

I find myself sitting in the tube, half asleep and hungry (as last week, it was roundabout the time I'd think about ordering a pizza or reaching out for a turkey sandwich), and thinking, "would it be really really really irresponsible of me to go on a sneaky, secret trip to a Caribbean island?"

My mind heads off to a fantasty world of swaying palm trees, stark, clear sunlight, sand and..mostly just the stark, raging unadulterated sunlight, to be honest.

Where would be a close and cheap place to do this? Even for a day? It seems like the Craibbean is the closest place, or maybe Chad. Or Algeria.

It's totally out of the question though, so I really shouldn't be thinking about this.

I need to start watching Lost. I never managed to watch past the first series. It's a tropical island right? And the plot is intriguing enough to keep me distracted for the next few weeks, no?