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On Not Actually Being That Keen On The Old Spring (Season)

Do you HONESTLY like the Spring?

  • Total voters
    28
GeorgeP said:
Thats pretty much how I see this. I love those frosty mornings with sunlight sparkling along the ground and in the hedgerows,

Spring brightens eveything up again but reminds me that another heatwaved summer is not far behind.

Finding it hard to sleep at night, hosepipe bans, those annoying neighbours with their evening garden partys....grrrrrrr
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Yes, these are are crucial to my resentment of spring, I suspect.
 
Ulalume said:
Hi Andy,

You may not be alone in this - I remember hearing some years ago that depression and suicide rates increase in spring. These may be US numbers though. Spring is always a time when my depression gets worse, even though I'm grateful for the increasing sunlight (though the difference between summer and winter hours of light hardly varies, unlike England) My reasons may apply only to my area of the US though. I'll see if I can explain in a way that makes sense...

In the US, there is a rule of thumb that if winter is brown and summer is green where you live, you are in the east. If winter is green and summer is brown, you are in the west. Where I live, summer is brown, dry, hot as a blast furnace with the drone of cicadas everywhere - I love it. On the other hand, spring is green and wet, grass and weeds shoot up to waist-height no sooner than you turn your back, and underneath it all there is this smell of decay that makes me uneasy. The sense that all this sudden growth is hinting instead at the inevitability of death. Especially if it's drizzling rain and the drip-drip-drip on the roof is the very sound of despair...
(yeah, my depression is always worse in spring and I really can't stand drizzle. :p)

That said, my daughter (who's lived in England a couple of years now) and some British ex-pat friends have pointed out that typical "British summer-type weather" occurs here in March, and that the sun never feels as hot as it does even in the dead of winter here ( :eek: ) so I'm honestly not sure I can imagine what British spring feels like.
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That's really interesting - thanks! As I said, my intention was not to start a competition to vote for The Best Season but to figure out if anyone else dislikes springtime and, ideally, why that is. I think in my case it comes down to the fact that, although I enjoy the sunshine and the abundance of nature, I don't like long days. The fact that feelings of being unsettled seem to increase during springtime (to the point of proper clinical depression and suicide) may just prove that sudden changes to the environment such as a change of season can be profoundly disturbing in general - especially in the UK where we have to 'put the clocks forward' into the bargain. On your other very insightful point, I can see how the fecundity of the natural world could perversely turn one's thoughts towards the inevitability of death and the fact that the trees and lichens will outlive us all.
 
The difference in sunlight hours probably is unsettling. Not being a world traveler, it was something I'd never thought about until recently. Where I live, the longest day of the year is only abut 3 hours longer than the shortest day of the year. The difference in England is, what, about 10? That's a big adjustment. If it bothers you, it must seem like a long, inexorable drag.

Once I thought about it, it certainly furthered my understanding of how nature-based religions in the old world developed. Around here, it's unlikely the ancient peoples ever worried about the sun disappearing (in Lipan Apache lore, the sun was was named "killer of enemies", if that gives any indication). But ten hours or more difference, yes, that would have a powerful influence on one's life from season to season.

This thread came to mind today, because it was one of the worst sort of April days (IMO, of course) Hot and steamy and jungle-y. Always get the creeping horrors on days like this. Once all the wetness burns off, it will be better.
 
I adore spring! I love the extra hours of light. I love the warmer weather, when it's not too warm. It's a bit annoying that it can be cold in the mornings but warmer later in the afternoon, especially doing a physical job outdoors as I do. For example, yesterday morning I was scraping ice off my car, then I was sweating my anus off by two o'clock. But that's hardly a big issue. It's not cold for long. I have a friend who can't stand spring and summer. She hates being too warm, she struggles to sleep. Her favourite season is autumn. She's even named her daughter Autumn. Which, I have to admit, makes a lovely name. A nicer name than a season.
 
PeteByrdie said:
...Her favourite season is autumn. She's even named her daughter Autumn. Which, I have to admit, makes a lovely name. A nicer name than a season.
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A younger fellow I know has just called his new daughter Storm ... because she was conceived during a storm .. I've told both parents that there's also a (fictional) female super hero called Storm .. :cool:
 
There's also a writer called Storm Constantine...
 
Mythopoeika said:
There's also a writer called Storm Constantine...
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IMDB lists multiple actors / directors (of both genders) with Storm as a given name, and many more with Storm as the last name ...
 
And my cat is called Stormy after a character from the Malazan Book of the Fallen series
 
And there was that Storm something fella who did graphic design for such things as Pink Floyd album covers. I think he died relatively recently...

Edit: Here he is
 
Storm's a great name I hadn't heard of it outside of fiction. All the seasons could make nice names, perhaps apart from spring.
 
Andy_X said:
I really don't look forward to this time of year and I can't believe it's all that unusual to suffer from this kind of reverse SAD. Yet I have never got a single person to admit to it.
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Well, there's me now, so that's an extra vote!

Funny thing is, I love the first 2 days of Spring, then the sunshine becomes a depressing bore, and it's all downhill...
 
How do people who suffer with SAD carry on when they live in places like Canada or Antartica?
 
Isn't there some kind of special lamp you can sit under as therapy?
 
Endlessly reading Kenneth Grahame during a rather fey childhood has instilled a deep love of summer, but spring bursting out of winter never fails to lift my spirits, slightly.
 
sherbetbizarre said:
Well, there's me now, so that's an extra vote!

Funny thing is, I love the first 2 days of Spring, then the sunshine becomes a depressing bore, and it's all downhill...
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That's about the size of it, SB. Looking at the poll results I'm as persuaded as I can be that that those of us antipathetic, or at best ambivalent, towards springtime and are in a tiny, and possibly persecuted, minority ;)
 
It was a glorious day yesterday and I went to pick my daughter up from brownies. The roads were jammed pack full of Audi and BMW boneheads driving up my arse, the park was full of moped chavs who had littered the carpark with crushed mcDonalds detritus and were deliberately booting their ball against the cars. Drug-related paraphernalia visible. AND I trod in dog shit. I do love the sun but it's other people who wreck any possible enjoyment of it.
 
drbastard said:
It was a glorious day yesterday and I went to pick my daughter up from brownies. The roads were jammed pack full of Audi and BMW boneheads driving up my arse, the park was full of moped chavs who had littered the carpark with crushed mcDonalds detritus and were deliberately booting their ball against the cars. Drug-related paraphernalia visible. AND I trod in dog shit. I do love the sun but it's other people who wreck any possible enjoyment of it.
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In the past we had dinosaurs and cavemen. Now we have pretty much the same thing only with bells and whistles attached.
 
drbastard said:
It was a glorious day yesterday and I went to pick my daughter up from brownies. The roads were jammed pack full of Audi and BMW boneheads driving up my arse, the park was full of moped chavs who had littered the carpark with crushed mcDonalds detritus and were deliberately booting their ball against the cars. Drug-related paraphernalia visible. AND I trod in dog shit. I do love the sun but it's other people who wreck any possible enjoyment of it.
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Sounds all very familiar drB...round these parts it's the custom as soon as the warmer weather arrives to go outside and have a good old shout for a few hours, then go to a park to shout some more, saving just enough energy for a nice shout on the way home. I'd hypothesise that it's the unfettered joy of springtime expressed in an unsophisticated way within the considerable restraints of 'chav' culture but as these tend to be people who have zero interest in the weather or the natural world, or much else, the rest of the year it's sort of puzzling.
 
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