I found myself down a rabbit hole this week reading about The Year Without a Summer. In April 1815, the volcanic Mount Tambora in Indonesia experienced the most explosive eruption in recorded history. It ejected so much sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere that a persistent fog reddened and dimmed the sun well into the Spring and Summer of the following year, and as far away as the United States and Europe. It was a fog that was unaffected by wind or rain. Global temperatures dropped, crops were heavily impacted, and mass famine claimed the lives of up to 100,000 people.
It also forced Mary Shelley, Lord Byron and John William Polidori to stay indoors for much of their summer holiday in Switzerland, away from the incessant rain and red skies. There, they took a bunch of laudanum and Byron challenged the group to see who could come up with the scariest story. Shelley created Frankenstein, and between them Byron and Polidori conceived the modern concept of a Vampire. Two of literature’s most enduring creations were invented at the same time in an opium-fuelled lockdown. Wild.
Now we’re far from that, but it still felt pertinent to read this as the days have grown shorter, the air cooler, and the skies darker. The mornings especially have been dark. I don’t consider myself a “morning person” nor an “evening person”, but I do know that I’m not great at sleeping in. My body clock has its own plans and more often than not wakes me around 5:30 almost every day regardless of when I go to bed – and I’m not usually one to fight it. Last year at Splendour in the Grass, I spent two to three hours each morning killing time as I waited for the rest of the house to greet the day. But mornings are superior for many things – workouts, sunrise runs, long breakfasts, reading, thinking, sex. An early start can leave a day feeling fulfilled before work even begins.
But evenings have also been a lot busier of late, and as the end of daylight saving turns that 5:30 start into 4:30, it makes the next few weeks a challenge until my internal timekeeper adjusts my body clock. Jetlag rarely takes me, but winding back that clock one hour is like fangs in my neck.
I wouldn’t last too long as a vampire. The moment the sun came out I’d race out and explode like Mount Tambora.
Here’s what’s been in my ears this month. I’ve had that Spaceport song on loop.