Cosy curfew season

We just want to leave the house after dark.

Cosy season has arrived, ladies!

Let’s snuggle up in our blankets and jumpers with our spice-scented candles and warming stews. We can hunker down on our sofas and read Sally Rooney’s latest, watch Rupert Campbell-Black smoulder and seduce on Rivals, and play video games, guilt-free. We can be hermits, surrendering our introverted urges and putting our phones on Do Not Disturb.

It’s hibernation time.

Wait. No.

Let’s start that again.

Curfew season has arrived, ladies.

The clocks have gone back and the evenings are drawing in at alarming speed. We’re feeling unsafe leaving the house after 5pm. The after-work wanders we enjoy during the summer are a thing of memory. The anxiety of going anywhere, alone, once the sun has set, starts even earlier.

We move in herds, picking each other up along the way, waiting with each other at stations, sharing taxis to multiple destinations, and filling up group chats with our demands for confirmations of safe locations.

It’s hibernation time. Whether we like it or not.

We tuck our summer social lives away, along with our floaty linen dresses and shorts until the spring. 

We cram as much into the daytime as possible, around work, school, childcare, or whatever else we have to do.

Evening drinks make way for a quick lunchtime coffee. Life admin and grocery runs are squeezed in between Teams meetings. Evening jogs shift to a speedy hour at the gym before dusk or are sometimes skipped altogether. According to Sport England's This Girl Can campaign, “72% of women change their behaviour when exercising during winter—up 26% from a similar study last year.”

When you get fewer than eight hours of daylight (the shortest day is just seven hours and 49 minutes this year) there is a LOT to fit in.

I recently spotted this post on LinkedIn by Career-Decision Coach Yasmin Sampson - Da Rocha, which says that ‘women lose 5.1 weeks a year due to Winter’.

An almost astonishing statement - until you think about it a little harder, and feel unsurprised.

I limit my evening social plans, and only enthusiastically agree to things if I’m not going alone, can get a lift/taxi, or can get to and from bus stops with ease - because even the short five-minute walk to my nearest one feels a tad dicey after dark.

I ask my partner to track me on Find My, and I Text When I Get Home. I spend more on taxis and buses, and get blisters and worn-down soles from going the long way home because it’s better-lit, busier, and much less risky. I take full advantage of my flexible hours, and leave the office just after lunch, so I can walk home before sunset.

I’m on edge. I feel anxious, sometimes even scared, that my luck will run out one day. My luck.

I am lucky when I go from A to B in a city without incident, when it should be my right.

And when spring arrives, and I can walk outside to meet friends in daylight at *gasp* 6pm, I feel so elated that I might as well be floating down the path to the pub.

Countless think pieces have already emerged on this topic this autumn. In the wake of that Saoirse Ronan moment on The Graham Norton Show, I’ve read articles, Substacks, and Instagram posts galore discussing these concerns.

When I started typing this, I wondered if I really needed to join in too. But if we all stopped talking and sharing our feelings and experiences just because someone got there first, how would we have a conversation? How would we keep the momentum going? How would we make ourselves clear?

(Incidentally, here’s a Substack post about that moment by Ella off the Rails , and another great post by Emily Ash Powell on her Substack, Hurdling. And this piece from Lauren Brook.)

What about women who work night shifts, drive Ubers or buses, or deliver takeaways? Women who have no choice but to be out and about at all hours.

Think of all the women who go missing. Think of Sarah, and Sabina, and the countless, countless others. Those who have been attacked, assaulted, or murdered simply for going out in the dark, in a place where they had every right to be.

Indeed, I write all of this as a white, straight, working-class woman, living in a city in the UK. We must also consider other marginalised groups who face equal or even greater risks in public spaces, particularly after dark: disabled, minoritised and racialised communities, those living on the margins of society, those living abroad, and all intersectional identities. For many, the financial burden of extra safety measures – like taking a taxi or relying on friends and family for lifts – is simply out of reach. For many, there’s no easy way to escape the dark and the danger, and, heartbreakingly, no safe home waiting for them at all.

I love this time of year. I do. I jested at the beginning about this cosy lifestyle but honestly, I enjoy my nights in, writing, reading, baking and watching good TV. It’s a nice excuse to take it easy. The excuse to stay home and recharge can, at times, be a blessing, especially when you’re burnt out. But it should be a choice.

I’m not sure how to end this piece, really. Nothing I’ve written here has been groundbreaking. I’ve barely scratched the surface of what we should be talking about, and I’ve not added anything revolutionary to the discussion.

It can feel a little hopeless. I can’t imagine a world where the night is as inviting for us as the day; where we can all move freely and confidently; and where every step taken after sunset is taken without a second thought.

But change can start with shared stories and support.

We must start working for better infrastructure and challenge those accepted norms which place the responsibility of safety on individual women and people rather than addressing the core systemic issues at play.

And in the meantime, we must slowly, but surely, raise our voices, and demand the basic safety we all deserve.

The nights will always get longer in the winter. But we won’t always have to let it limit us.

I hope.