Today is summer solstice, and for the first time I can remember, it feels like summer. Bright blue skies, sundresses, warm enough to be bare-legged.

I have no idea what time the sun came up – at that hour I’d have still been cosied up in prosecco-soaked dreams after stumbling in a little too late after drinks with colleagues. It won’t go down for a good six hours yet though, so there’s still plenty of time to enjoy it.

I love those points of the day when the sun rises and falls – almost equally, in fact. Summer sunsets remind me of long, happy barbecues with friends, winter ones of cosying up in front of the fire with a bottle of wine. Sunrise brings memories of May balls – wearing some boy’s suit jacket, shivering in the shadows, feeling the effects of the alcohol beginning to wear off – and of early morning city centres, completely deserted apart from supermarket lorries unloading.

Dark and light, they’re both great, in their own way.

Sex during the day is great too, especially when it feels like you’ve snuck away to do it. Sex in the middle of the afternoon, hidden only by net curtains, the window open a little bit and the smell of barbecues floating in. Lazy, slow, missionary sex , first thing in the morning…

It took me a fairly long time to get there, though, and when I did, most of the sex I had was either during the day or with the lights on. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to fuck in the dark, to feel the other person more than seeing them.

And then, a few months back, I rediscovered its joys in a hotel room: already snuggled up in a warm bed, the boy showed up late, carrying two glasses of red. He left the lights off, only the 24hr glow of the city outside taking the edge off the blackness. We lay side by side, talking, sipping wine. I could just make out that through his boxers, he was stroking his cock.

And I thought: Yeah, I always was a night owl…