Where Would We Be Without Blackout Blinds?

One of the problems with living so far from the equator is the absurd variation in day length from one season to the next. In the bleak midwinter we struggle out of bed in the dead of night, stumble to work in the foreboding foredawn and endure long oppressive hours under artificial strip lights before staggering back out when the klaxon sounds into the oppressive embrace of darkness. It’s as if we all become enforced cave dwellers for a few months. Our eyes atrophy and skin becomes pallid, as we stoically fight off rickets; until we eventually, victoriously emerge, wizened and blinking into the brave new dawn of a bright spring day. It would be fine then if spring endured but all too soon the days lengthen and lengthen and lengthen, until the embrace of night is a distant memory and we all start believing it’s perfectly reasonable to still be trying to charcoal a sausage on a half-starved barbeque half an hour before midnight. It’s also, at some moment in the midst of these never-ending days that we suddenly start to question whether it was such a bright idea to decide to have children after all. Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids to pieces but when my three year old flings open our bedroom curtains at 5.30 in the morning gleefully declaring ‘the sun’s awake, so I’m awake!’ I start to get a little less tolerant.

Hence the heading.

I would start to delve into exploring the answers but they probably don’t bear thinking about...