Why I Wrote sunshine
I am, and have been for as long as I can remember, obsessed with sunshine. Maybe even addicted. Like some heliotropic plant, my whole mood and outlook is profoundly affected by the fickle play of the photosphere...
My neighbours call me ‘Gecko Boy’, from my habit of climbing a ladder against our building to catch the few last rays of the descending sun. I’ve sunbathed before work, at 7.30 in the morning; and know where and for how long there will be patches of sunlight after work in the summer, and religiously do my rounds of them in strict order on my way home. I only walk on the sunny side of the street, and will go out of my way, or be late for appointments, to avoid shade. I’ve perplexed waiters the world over by choosing the only table out in the sun on their terraces, and refusing their well-intentioned attempts to erect parasols over my poor crazed English head.
If the sun’s out and I’m not, I’m like some junkie climbing the walls. And so I take furtive sun breaks as others take fag breaks during the working day. Surely I’m as entitled to a ten-minute fix of my favoured carcinogen as they are. For each man dies by the thing he loves… And as for love, I’ve always been attracted to dark-haired, dark-skinned women in some unconscious attempt at consummation with the south, with a flesh and blood avatar of my distant mistress. My ‘true mistress’ as one former girlfriend tetchily remarked. ...
Sunshine is about that love; about my and our collective love affair with the sun. A love founded on loss, longing, desire and despair. It's a very romantic book, where perhaps sometimes I wear my heart a bit too prominently on my sleeve. But I wanted to write a book about feelings, and how love and sunshine are inextricably linked in my mind, and not just mine. Why do so many pop songs, and before that poems, use weather imagery to hymn the highs and lows of love? I wanted to get under the skin of that association, and write the natural history of that love. Most weather books are full of facts - anaorak's almanacs all - mine is full of feelings. The rapture when the sun breaks through the perpetual porridge overhead, and we discover our sky also comes in blue; about that warm caress of homecoming when we step onto foreign tarmac; and about digging delighted toes into white hot holiday sands. If you can sing a rainbow, then why not write some sunshine? Or at least try to pin it down in words, tune into some of its wavelengths, and reveal some of its mysteries. That's what I've tried to do in Sunshine.
