Northern hemisphere winter solstice blues

21 Dec
Rainy morning in San Francisco
Cold and wet in the valley of the mills
Where is the light of the southern summer?
I've got the northern hemisphere winter solstice blues.

I wake up to the sound of hissing rain
windows are sunless, outside leaves are wet.
Sky is weighed down with lightless cloud
And at nine in the morning the lamps are lit

We don't do proper winter out here in California,
Cool and fresh baby, all year round,
Summer's warm and dry, though winter can be wetter
I've got the northern hemisphere winter solstice blues.


And even then, SF has two hours of daylight more than London. And Christmas lights sparkle in the gloom.


In the early afternoon, the rain stopped, so we took ourselves out for a stroll, along Throckmorton Avenue, past the Mill Valley public library and the O'Hanlon Center for the Arts, to where it joins Cascade Drive. Soon we turned off on a track labelled Tenderfoot Trail, which climbed quite steeply for a while before becoming the Monte Vista Trail, which was soon a normal road, for these parts, in other words rather winding, and with houses looking as though they wouldn't have been out of place in the Grimms' Fairytales. We seemed to be walking down even further than we had come up. As we approached the town again it began to rain with serious intent.

After eating we decided to try the attractions of Friday night out in Mill Valley. There's an excellent cinema, and we made up two-thirds of the audience for the 10.15 showing of Anna Karenina.

Fishermans Wharf