Why I can’t wait for the clocks to go back this weekend

Covid-19 has meant life has been been challenging enough over the past months so let’s not beat ourselves up about the changing seasons, writes Janet Street-Porter

The clocks go back this Sunday (iStock/Getty)

This weekend marks the start of winter when the clocks go back an hour on Sunday. It’s a cue for moping, miserable faces and moaning about dark evenings and short days. Covid-19 has meant life has been been challenging enough over the past months so let’s not beat ourselves up about the changing seasons.

Why not adopt a more positive attitude and declare it’s less than eight weeks until the days start getting longer on 21 December? I’ve just spent a few days walking in Yorkshire, in unseasonably warm weather. The countryside was drenched in colour, the woods were starting turn gold, and fungi were popping up through the moss underfoot.

My trip included a visit to Robin Hood’s Bay, where I completed the Wainwright’s coast to coast walk in August 1989. My (then) partner and I had walked more than a hundred miles through fog, torrential rain, floods, and high winds. My diary of the journey is soaked with rain and bird poo from aggressive seagulls. It was a feat of endurance.