It’s official. ‘Tis the season to wake up, go to work and return home in the dark. Strictly’s back, the heating’s on and you’re in loungewear. (Office to straight-into-bedwear.) The urge to hibernate feels animal. But before you turn in with the hedgehogs remember, come springtime, we humans can struggle to climb out of a hole.

If you find yourself feeling prickly, withdrawn and down as the daylight hours shorten you could be one of the 1.6 million people in the U.K affected by Seasonal Affective Disorder – a form of depression linked to the dark winter months. Whilst the acronym may be more memorable, it downplays a recurrent condition that goes well beyond feeling SAD. And for those with desk jobs, the low mood and lethargy can be amplified by sheer lack of movement. (I recently found woodlice under my chair. When woodlice mistake you for deadwood, it’s a signal to shift.)

Fortunately, small changes can make a big difference. A seat by a window, an outdoor coffee break, and a cheeky cha-cha-cha to the printer can all help to brighten the mood.  For me, it’s a brisk walk at lunchtime to let in the light.

Yesterday, I stepped out into a dazzling, golden haze. A bright winter sun and a long line of school children, velcroed into high-vis vests and scuttling as one, like a day-glow caterpillar. A motion more of a bounce than a wriggle, due to all the little legs leaping over cracks in the pavement.  I joined on and in at the tail end and soon caught the glow. Fallen leaves cushioned the shock to my ankles and I picked out oak, ash and maple silhouettes from the makeshift carpet. Only weeks ago I didn’t know my ash from my elbow. Now I have an Autumn favourite; the Beech tree, for its blaze of amber leaves that gleam even on the gloomy days, as if lit from within.

The simple act of noticing, while outdoors, is especially beneficial to our wellbeing. It doesn’t matter if we can name more fancy fonts than flora. It’s the noticing of things, not the naming of them that’s beneficial. All we need to do is look and listen.

Noticing the arrival of a day-glow caterpillar was a plucky looking robin, fluffed up to nearly twice its size and ‘tut-tut-tut-ting’ from the top of a hawthorn hedge. Either protecting its territory or judging me for wheezing with the effort of an uphill slope.  I took the opportunity to inspect the famous ‘red’ breast and confirm it to be positively orange. In English, the word for orange didn’t exist until the fruit arrived, so our beloved robin redbreast is technically misnamed. If you thought you couldn’t love a robin more, think again. Positively orange and radiating redness anyway.

At the chime of church bells, the caterpillar chatter gave way to song.

‘Oranges and lemons say the bells of St Clement’s…’

and as the little legs and voices swung left and away, it was my turn for tutting, as I struggled to remember the words. Still, I kept the tune in my head and a childlike feeling.

I passed a row of cottages that could have blown in from a fairy tale, complete with ginger bread bricks and sugar-stack chimneys for pumping out the day’s cotton-candy clouds. There were pumpkins perched on all the lower windowsills. Some wearing Halloween grins, others blank, awaiting fairy god mothers to turn them into coaches. The owner of a red door, boasting a fox-head doorknocker, (…surely a fox, not a wolf) had left an offering of rosy apples on the doorstep. A tempting rosy apple, by a fairy tale door… in late November… likely a late season variety, maybe Winston or a Pippin . I pocketed one, heeding my own mother’s warning to ‘make sure you wash that before you eat it.’

At the entrance to a graveyard giant oak trees bowed towards each other and within them I stumbled on a squatter. Ivy. As it turns out, more of a cohabitor than a trespasser. In exchange for growing space, ivy protects the oak from frost and its lime-green flowers and purple berries attract birds and insects known to prey on oak pests. Gazing up in admiration of the peaceful pair, climbing and collaborating up into the clouds, it occurred to me that the world is held together by countless quiet contributions. And that the bare branches of an oak look a lot like giant arms, and the twigs on the ends, a lot like giant fingers, and that standing underneath a giant arm tunnel was tugging at memory, a playground memory of arms hoping to catch me, and then came the words to the song!

‘…………………………..

Here comes the candle to light you to bed,
and here comes the chopper to chop off the last … man’s … head.’

A spooky kind of ending for a graveyard, but in the daylight I didn’t dwell on it.

I scooped up acorns for the thrill of holding giants in my hand, only to be screeched at by a scold of angry jays. These acorn lovers hide them in the ground in the Autumn and retrieve them in the Winter when food is scarce. The ones that don’t get eaten, in the right conditions, germinate, making jays vital to oak regeneration. I wondered if I’d ever accidentally dropped one as a child in the perfect place to grow, and if so, how big it might be now. Then made a show of returning all but one to the ground. A pocket prompt for planting one on purpose.

By the gate, a crowd of winter jasmine warmed their faces in the sun. Even tucked behind a cloud, twenty minutes of winter sun is enough to lift our mood. I stood among the happy faces, lost in the crowd, then disappeared completely to the playful pull of downhill momentum, aware only of the rhythm of my feet and gentle pat of my rucksack.

I came to a bridge and watched the river race beneath me, polishing stones inside the riverbed into glossy shades of brown. Fudge brown, cinnamon brown, brownie brown and tea-and-toast the way I like them brown. It was definitely lunchtime.

A mallard darted from side to side against the current, seemingly unsure of keeping up with the  pace. It struck me that I often overlook a duck, in that way that we often overlook anyone and anything that’s always there. Imagine owning wings and choosing to tough it out with the wingless over winter. I took a moment to acknowledge all the mallard’s, for their all-year-round duck dependability. And to this one, suffering from duck-doubt, I beamed my best ‘you can do it!’ in duck friendly mind-talk. Then made my way along the mud path to deal with my low blood sugar.

I spied an empty bench just beyond a weeping willow tree, aptly named for its stooping posture, drooping branches and tear shaped leaves. But something in the light, the lens or the breeze told me  this one was more inclined to waltz than to weep. I reached my arms around its trunk, a slightly shy but willing partner, and with my cheek pressed to the bark I was startled by a hum. I stepped back  two-three but so too-three did the hum. And when I realised it was my own sapped energy I could feel, stepping up to hum despite the drain of recent worry, it almost brought a tear to my eye. God these weeping willow trees are good.

I sank down on the bench among the flora and the fauna, feeling part of the picture. Took out my flask and poured myself some steaming hot tomato soup. (Positively orange.)

There’s a lot of clever science exploring ways to help our mental health. But all the sunlamps, supplements and sky simulators have yet to lift the epidemic winter gloom.

At my prickliest, I find it best to stick to playground science. Those early elemental lessons that taught us what it brings to leave our desks and get outside during the day. And long before the benefit of ‘knowledge’, that the daylight is full of colours. Enough for turning winter blues into oranges and lemons.