When the clocks go back and the evenings draw in

The clocks go back, and suddenly the evening seems to arrive before you’re ready for it. You draw the curtains earlier. The journey home is darker. There’s less daylight left between finishing what you have to do and starting anything that feels like your own time.

Some people welcome it. Lamps on, something warm for tea, permission to stay indoors. For others, the same evening can feel long or lonely. You might feel both, depending on the day.

There’s a particular adjustment in late October. Your routine may barely change, but the hours around it feel different. A walk after work isn’t quite the same. An evening alone can feel quieter when the window reflects the room back at you.

You don’t have to turn that feeling into a project. There’s no requirement to love autumn, make your home cosier or find something good about the extra hour.

Perhaps what you miss is quite specific:

• Seeing a little daylight when you leave work
• The neighbour you’d stop and chat with outside
• Having somewhere to go without thinking about the dark

Those can be small parts of a day and still matter.

Sometimes the change in season brings something into focus. You realise how much you valued those brief conversations, or how little company there is in your week outside work. You may not want a solution just now. You may simply want to talk about what this time of year is like for you.

Simply Heard offers confidential £35 one-to-one sessions with a trained human listener. It isn’t therapy or counselling. There’s no advice, no judgement, and nothing is recorded.

Please allow three days before a session. You don’t need to prepare a clear account of how you’re feeling. “I’m finding the evenings difficult” is somewhere to begin.

As the evenings draw in, there’s a chair waiting, and time to settle into it.