The £4 Candle and Other Small Defences Against a 4pm Sunset

There's a specific moment in early November when the dark stops being atmospheric and starts being a bit of a grind. For me it arrives around half three, when the light goes that flat grey-blue and I start doing complicated maths about whether I can justify putting the big light on before four o'clock.

I've tried the expensive route in previous winters. I bought a lamp that was supposed to simulate a sunrise. I bought a blanket that cost more than my first car and shed fibres over everything I owned. Neither changed my life. So this year I went the other way and decided to see how far a tenner and a bit of stubbornness could get me.

What follows is not a wellness plan. It's just the stuff that's working, roughly in order of how much I'd miss it if it disappeared.

A candle that costs less than a pint

Mine came from Sainsbury's and was £4. It smells like pine and something vaguely citrus and it burns for about as long as a decent film. It is not a luxury candle. Nobody is going to put it in a photograph with a linen napkin and a marble coaster. It sits on the draining board next to the washing-up liquid, and the fact that it's slightly scruffy makes it easier to actually light, rather than saving it for an occasion that never comes.

The trick, I've found, is buying two so you don't ration them. A candle you're afraid to burn is just a jar.

Library audiobooks, on an app you're already paying for

This is the single best thing on the list and it's free. A library card takes about four minutes to sort online, and then you've got BorrowBox or Libby on your phone and access to thousands of audiobooks without a subscription fee.

It is brilliant and slightly maddening in equal measure. There are waiting lists. Somebody in your borough is hogging the one you want and you will have to be patient. But I've got through six books since September, almost entirely while hanging up laundry, chopping onions and driving to the tip. I have become the sort of person who looks forward to doing the washing-up because it's chapter eleven.

If you're new to it, don't start with the three-hour literary novel on existential dread. Start with something with a plot.

A hot water bottle at eight, not at eleven

I used to fill mine right before bed, which meant it was lukewarm by the time I got in and the bedroom was still grim. Now I fill it at eight and put it under the duvet, so the whole bed is warm by the time I turn in. That is the entire tip. It's saved me the argument with myself about putting the heating on for twenty minutes at ten o'clock, which I always lose.

If you want to spend money, spend it on a decent cover. The £8 bottle from the hardware shop is fine. The cheap fleece cover that leaves a bald patch after three washes is not.

Twenty minutes outside with nothing in my ears

No podcast. No audiobook. No playlist. Just the street and the recycling bins and whoever's out walking their dog.

I resisted this for ages because it sounded like a thing a magazine would tell you to do in January. But the quiet walk does something the earbud walk doesn't, which is let me notice I'm in a real place with real weather, rather than being somewhere in my head replaying a conversation from 2019.

It is also completely free, which is the only reason I kept it up for long enough to notice the effect.

Something for my hands that isn't a phone

I picked up a jigsaw from a charity shop for £2.50 in October. It's missing one piece, which I've decided is part of its charm. I do twenty minutes of it after dinner while half-watching something on the telly, and the difference between that and twenty minutes of scrolling is night and day.

A ball of wool works as well, if you can already knit or crochet or are happy to make something wonky. The point isn't the output. The point is that your hands are busy so your brain stops circling.

What didn't work

The lamp. I know people swear by them and I'm sure the good ones are excellent, but mine sat on the kitchen table for a fortnight and made the room feel like a branch of an NHS dentist. I kept meaning to move it somewhere better and eventually it went in the cupboard under the stairs, where it lives with the sandwich toaster.

The blanket. Ordered from an advert at half eleven at night, arrived with a smell, shed over the sofa, and cost £34. My mum's knitted throw from years ago, which is a slightly strange mustard colour, is warmer and better and cost nothing.

One last thing

The dark evenings are going to happen whether I make a fuss or not. I can't rearrange them. What I can do is make half four less rubbish, and it turns out half four can be substantially improved by a four-pound candle, a borrowed audiobook and a bed that's already warm.

You don't need all five. Pick the one you'd actually do tonight and leave the rest.