Surviving a November Day

Today's weather: Solidly dull and gray. Chilly, but not windy and not rainy. This is classic English November. You don't see it in tourist brochures.

Today's Bright Spots:

1. A walk in circles on the Wanstead Flats. It starts of as an aimless wander, and perks me up after half an hour. What light there is, you have to be outside that it may fill your vision. The long grass is sopping wet, but catching a skyful of gray daylight beats the hell out of being indoors. And out of a grassy bit I spotted Two Gigantic Mushrooms, each 9 inches across, side by side and their hats kissing in communed fusion. Today's pleasant surprise. I don't have a digicam, but I might take a film photograph of it yet.
   
2. Going to Tesco's supermarket. This seems ridiculous at first, but as soon as I enter the Tesco's in Goodmayes, I feel better. Their lighting makes all the difference. Fluorescent light is making a comeback, because in Shoreditch a new hotel on the High Street features it in their exterior lighting scheme. Fluorescent light may not be the same colour as sunlight, but when spread out in quantity, it can emulate the light coming from a bright sky. I decide that S.A.D. is wrongly described as a Disorder. I'm going to call it SEasonal Lack of LIght Condition. SeLLiC. It wasn't a human disorder until electric lighting was invented. Under natural circumstances, the hibernation response brought upon by winter darkness is an advantage to survival through a long, cold winter when less food is available. I refuse to be labelled as having a disorder in our modern technological civilisation for a condition which once was a natural biological advantage.
   
3. On my way home, having stopped off at the Wickes to buy some Wood Preservative, I'm waiting at a train station. A fellow coming off work, with a Hi-Viz Vest that mentions something to do with Cable Prep, arrives on the platform with a salty older colleague. He is genetically handsome, cranially and physically, fit, ruddy with health. On the train, just for the sake of comparison, I look around at the many people in the car, and it is obvious that he is about 200% more attractive than any man or woman there. I can't understand why women don't just walk up to him and insist on bearing his children, even if they know that he won't be able to stick around. I would! As it happens, while he chats on his mobile phone it sounds like he is happy and has a happy wife at home. God bless, I was worried that he'd be wasted. Hope they have thousands and thousands of grand children one day.
   
4. Trying to convince the Tesco's Manager to improve the pedestrian access. They're refurbishing the supermarket and the car access. But just on two days this week I have witnessed some sad old folk struggling to get down the unfriendly stairs. There is NO pavement on that side of the main road, so they are forced to walk down some stairs to the supermarket level. They have the alternative of a very long zigzagging wheelchair access ramp, but without a wheelchair, it takes three times as long to go down the ramp as to struggled down the stairs. Wheelchair access is another madness of Political Correctness: most wheelchair disabled people arrive at a supermarket front door by taxi. But loads of money is spent on providing wheelchair access ramps like these, while your generally infirm arthritic, rheumatic, walking-stick-using, crumbling old people suffer on badly designed pedestrian access. The Western World needs to go back to Common Sense. But the Tesco's Manager actually took my point, after some persuasion, and promised to mention it to his superiors. At least the idea has been planted in one man's brain. Which is more than this blog achieves, methinks.
   
5. Chocolate. It is the only thing that compensates for the serotonin deficit of SeLLiC. It works. If only the West African farmers were paid a fair price for their cocoa. Perhaps they should form a Cocoa Cartel, and force their local price up, before they sell it to the International Monopolies. Perhaps they should email me and ask me to become their spokesman. I wouldn't mind business trips to Accra or Lagos in the middle of the British Winter!