Grey Is This Winter's Blues

[Excerpt from Guru Kaur's blog on the Be the Woman... Private Online Community for women...]

"Is that bear depressed?" said the young girl sitting on her father's shoulders as they wandered through London's Zoo. "No, darling," replied her doting father, "that's what bears do in winter, they curl up and sleep until the summer comes. It's called hibernation." There was a long pause. "Mummy's doctor says it's depression, I heard her tell Aunty on her phone." And thus one of my friends learnt of his wife's medical condition.

Depression has almost become a fashion statement, along with stress, to define our state of mind in these transitory years around the millennium. Back in the 1920s it was used to describe the economy. It crops up regularly in the news, in the weather bulletin, usually sitting in the Atlantic. It feels like a shrinking black box, a parapet above which it seems impossible to rise, a very heavy black cloud which never seems to be blown on its way.

And that's the thing. You can't live in England without noticing the weather.

Chocolate though has changed my approach to depression and the weather: you can't temper chocolate easily when the humidity is above 66%. In the last six months there have only been two days when I've been able to make chocolates. There hasn't been a day in the last six months when I haven't wanted to eat a chocolate. In this time we have had almost no rain and no sunshine. There has been a black cloud looming overhead, something to do with a depression out in the Atlantic, as usual.

The heavy moisture in the air dampens the spirits.

Learn more about the Be the Woman... Private Online Community »