I know we Brits are obsessed about the weather but frankly if you lived in this small, increasingly inward and parochial island, you would become obsessed with the weather too.

I grew up in the very North of our little island.  In a town of 8000 inhabitants, beyond half way to nowhere.  Wick is the county town of Caithness. Caithness is the final county in Scotland before you drop off the top into the cold North Sea.  Its claim to fame includes the old Queen Mothers favourite holiday destination, the Castle of Mey;  Ackergill Towers beloved of celebrities wanting to be Scottish for the weekend;  a nearly decommissioned nuclear fast reactor, Dounreay, along with its harbouring of the most northerly point in the UK – Duncansby Head, which can be found just a couple of miles away from the most northerly staging point of the United Kingdom,  John O’Groats.

The county of Caithness is a bleak, flat landscape, bereft of the average amount of sunshine that an average person in the UK would consider to be normal.  On its wild, windswept and deserted golden sandy beaches often the only sound is the sea thundering in and the seagulls crying overhead.

As a teenager I enrolled as an Auxiliary Coastguard, the perfect job for someone happy to stare out of the window at the wilds of the Pentland Firth, recording the ships passing and coordinating any activity which may necessitate calling out the lifeboat crew.  Often, the walk to the coastguard station for my 6 hour shift was an almighty battle against the elements.  Back then, as a mere slip of a girl,  I experienced being lifted right off my feet by ferocious winds, hail battering my face, as bent double I inched forward.  The coastguard station, located right on the promontory of sea and cliff, could be a 20 minute, or one hour, walk depending on the vagaries of the weather.  60 foot high sea waves hitting the harbour wall was a regular occurrence as was losing fishermen to the wild seas.  The favoured way of committing suicide was driving down the hill straight into the harbour or jumping off one of the many cliffs along the coastline.  Living and surviving in Caithness requires a resilience of soul and spirit and a propensity to live in semi grey darkness for at least half the year.

So its fair to say that for many reasons I never fitted in and the day after 6th form ended, I was on a train south, never looking back and rarely returning.

This experience of bleakness seeped into my heart and so I often find the transition from summer nights to autumnal days and the promise of a dark winter to be challenging for my soul.  Over the years I have researched the Seasonal Affective Disorder condition and looked at the many products on the market, which if you sit under them for a period of time, is supposed to mimic proper daylight.  I’ve yet to invest in one of these lights but as time marches on, I’m sure to finish my research, put my hand in my pocket and purchase one to help ‘happify’ my being.

As a result,  I am slightly obsessed by light and big skies.  It’s one of the many reasons that I fell in love with Africa.  The light is often cited by friends who have bought homes in places like Spain where even in the Winter the light is clean and cold and clear. I’m always up  for a visit, particularly in the Winter months.  In fact I have ‘missing light’ conversations a lot during Winter and the promise of sunshine in the Alps means that come November we are always looking at ski holiday details to get us over the hump of another grey and cloudy day, week or month.

A couple of years ago my baby brother got married in Wick, necessitating a trip “up north” with Craig and Roscoe, as slightly wary travelling companions.  (Craig loves to tell folks that the first person he ever saw in Wick was a man taking his Ferret for a walk using a small dog lead).   It had been 10 years plus since I was last in the town and aside from the addition of a roundabout and the inclusion of some well known High Street Stores, not a lot has changed.  It was Easter so the promise of some increased light with the clock changing was upon us and the vast expanse of sky and sea made for a compelling view.  We took a drive up to ‘Groats for the obligatory photograph under the white mileage sign, on a day where the watery sun was teasing us with promise.  We fell in love with the wild peace of the place and made the decision to debunk from the tiny, functional rooms of the Norseman hotel to a two bed apartment owned by Natural Retreats, right on the coast of the Pentland Firth.  The sun stayed with us for two days and I eventually saw the light which had so bewitched my parents.  In the sunshine, the coastline and scenery is spectacular, pinky, blue-grey sky stretching curved to the ends of the earth, using the sea as a springboard for light so entrancing I lost hours.

Two days is enough to have the men of the County taking to the streets in their short sleeves while we remain huddled in our down jackets, hats and scarves.  Two days is enough to fool me into a false sense of love and belonging.  Day three reality crashes in with the windows being battered by rain, hail and wind, the haar-mist rolling through so that watching the seals frolic in the sea outside is but a memory.

We saw out the week, a lot from the inside.  Our last day in Caithness saw the sun come out again but this time I was not fooled.  I took my family and my happy heart south.

I belong with the light.