WHAT with my 21st birthday coming around yet again, and my Other Half (OH) being miserable from the minute they put the clocks back to the day they go forward once more, we've been feeling a bit under the weather in our house of late.

"Under the weather"seems exactly the right term for it; general gloom descended with the fog that cloaked Clee Towers just before Christmas, and didn't really lift after that, unless you exclude an unexpectedly jolly New Year.

(Come to think of it, aren't unexpected celebrations almost always better than the sort of scheduled fun you've had on your diary for months? You know: December 31, 8pm - midnight: MUST ENJOY SELVES).

Anyway, that particular brief period of enjoyment wasn't enough to dispel the winter blues. We were as glum as usual by Wednesday.

It all goes to show that necessity really must be the mother of invention, because the OH then gave me an inspired early birthday present - a last-minute, long weekend break to the south of France.

So it was that fewer than 40 hours before this paper was printed, I was sunbathing - actually sunbathing - on the beach at Nice, and remembering once more just how much more cheerful a bit of decent weather can make you feel.

Our moods actually began to lift as soon as we arrived at Liverpool John Lennon Airport (motto: above us only sky). They've got Imagine Air Port Parking there, you know.

Nice was only a two-hour flight away. But it was a different world. People weren't scurrying about, heads down, hats on, desperate to get back into the warm; they were strolling in the sunshine, they were saying hello to one another, they were standing around, laughing and joking and admiring one another's dogs. Canine ownership seems compulsory in Nice.

Now, there's a lot of talk about Continental caf culture in York these days, but you wouldn't have caught me sitting in a howling gale in Parliament Street, scoffing coffee and croissants like I did in sunny Nice on Monday.

Despite the contribution our trip will have made to global warming, I sense I won't be doing that in York in January any time soon.

I did feel guilty about the carbon-footprint implications of our little jaunt, by the way. I do know short breaks by air are especially bad for the environment, and that budget airlines are the devil's work.

But there's no getting away from the fact that a bit of winter sunshine is a very seductive thing, deep in the depths of January.

It doesn't cost a fortune these days, either, thanks to the devil's efforts - and our long weekend made us feel absolutely great.

Appealing to people's environmental consciences may make them think twice about such trips, but it leaves a lot of us feeling resentful as well as guilty.

Essentially, it seems as if we are being scolded into renouncing a real, hard-earned and life-enhancing pleasure, with nothing but sackcloth-and-ashes smugness to take its place.

I know Britain has its attractions, and there are pleasures to be had in seasons other than summer. But those who would have us give up the cheap sunshine getaway should be giving these alternatives the hard sell instead of ladling on apocalyptic guilt.

Damn it, my wintry mood is creeping back again. Better dig out those holiday snaps, to remind me how I felt the day before yesterday