Some snow fell in the north of the country, but there wasn’t a great deal anywhere else. Spring arrived unheralded by gales or storms, our landlady got our gutters fixed, and slowly, as the months passed, I stopped worrying each time it rained. My year of getting wet – and thinking about, and reading about, rain – has broadened and deepened my feeling for the outside world. I’m no longer just a fair-weather walker; I can choose now to overcome the impulse for comfort and convenience that insulates us not only from the bad in life but from much of the good. I think we need the weather, in all its forms, to feel fully human – which is to say, an animal. It’s under our skin: not just psychologically, but physiologically too. New research has revealed that despite our double-glazed homes and brightly lit offices, a tiny but vital part of our brain knows what season it is outside and alters the behaviour of our immune systems accordingly: proof that millennia of evolution in nature – not apart from it – have left their mark.
