Fuck off August

"All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey..."
What Mama Cass and friends are singing about here, is something we all experience from time to time, the winter blues.  Once, when I was working in a bar, I arrived at work at half 5, it was pitch black and cold.  The bar was dead, it was early January and everyone was partied out after Bastard Christmas.  Although I am always relieved during this stage of the year (because Bastard Christmas is over), when the head chef greeted me with the usual, 'How are you?', I responded with;
"I feel like I am trapped in a perpetual winter, and the sun is never gonna come out again"
He wasn't expecting that.  He walked off looking scared, but did give me a chocolate brownie later, result!  (Actually, now I remember that I nicked it.  Bastard).
  The point is, that winter is sometimes shit, and especially last winter, which for me was The Winter of Discontent.  Now, it is September and we have to face facts, winter is going to come again.  I've seen Halloween stuff in the shops today, and The X Factor is on.  For some, this is a bit of a trauma because they feel like shit at this time of year.  These people have Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).  This isn't taken directly from a medical textbook or anything, but it's a bit like having The Magic Roundabout all summer, only to discover that when winter comes, your channel has changed to perpetual Taggart.
  I don't think I have proper SAD myself, but I am more prone to feeling down in the winter.  However, I have recently decided that August is pretty shit as well.  I don't like August because everyone assumes the UK is going to turn into some sort of tropical paradise, and we're gonna spend every waking moment drunk at a BBQ.  This would obviously be mint, but the reality is that we're gonna wake up to grey skies, but also be sweating because it's so muggy.  We might attempt a picnic, but soon have to knock it on the head as we keep getting knocked on the head by Frisbees in the park, thrown by children that should be at school.  We can't even take solace in having a lovely read because the papers are full of stories like 'Tights cause cancer' (this is a real Daily Mail headline I've seen with my own eyes), and a full page story on Kate Moss because she is smiling (I've seen this in The Mirror), as there is no politics going on.  Also, I've been observing society throughout the month via my job in A&E, and I can conclude that people have been drinking more and trying to kill themselves more.  Therefore, I am not alone in my theory that August is shit.  June and July are usually lovely, but people only use that as evidence that August will be even better, and then the sense of disappointment is even worse.
  I breathed a sigh of relief once September arrived, I think autumn is lovely.  November is the best part, with the dark nights, the snuggling up when it hasn't got that cold yet, the fireworks, the pretty leaves on the trees, there's a lot to love about that time of year.  I do feel apprehensive about the coming of winter, as I'm sure a lot of people do, but it's good to remember that some parts of it aren't that bad, and also that August is quite shite as well.