04 Nov 2009
Autumn just seems to arrive one day. As if there were a knock at the door, you wonder who it could be, go to answer and... ‘oh - it’s you’. Like a sudden splash of cold water to the face, it’s not completely unpleasant, even a bit refreshing, just a slight shock.
To be honest, a week or two before, as I walked for my morning bus, overhead a v-shaped flight of geese headed steadily away to the South. I thought ‘Ah-ha! The geese are flying South. This means that either our paratroopers are dropping into plucky little Belgium tonight to meet up with the Resistance, OR summer may be over...’ I forgot it then, but two weeks later, suddenly, one morning it was autumn.
The sky was a paler, insipid light blue. The jacket collar came up for the first time. Two Surrey dinkies kettled the windscreen of their little car in our quiet street, laughing softly, intimately. With my hands in pockets and my breath steaming at the bus-stop, I watched every car driver go past, hunched forward to peer through that one area of the windscreen that had properly cleared. (Do we all do that? Like picking our noses at the wheel at traffic lights?) The bus stopped, the door opened and the driver was wearing a cute little woolly hat.
‘Autumn - appearing now at a street near you...’
The driver actually said ‘Hi, Cliff!’ as I got on. Rather surreal, but - hey - I do surreal, so that’s fine. It's the season for changes, anyway...
I don’t think of years ending at the end of December, but rather when autumn shows up on my doorstep. The warmth of summer is finally lost, the plants will die and the world loses a little joy and sparkle. This is really when the year is expended and nearly done. I don’t mind - autumn has a beauty of its own. The wonderful variety of leaf colours. The childish pleasure of kicking up the leaves on woodland paths. Walking with a chill on your cheeks, but simultaneously cosy inside under a quilted jacket and scarf.
But there was one more surprise that morning. As the bus pulled up over a small rise into Cranleigh, low across the common, there was suddenly a massive nuclear explosion that flooded my vision with white, yellow and orange light before I blinked and averted my eyes, the incredibly bright light still ghosted on to my retina. The low early autumn sun shone right in, along the bus, sudden and startling. Why that day? Why do you suddenly notice so many things on one day? Autumn - it catches you out, I tell you.
I wonder if more relationships die in autumn too? Do we sense the time for change?
The very air is different today
A flock of geese flies honking away
Through autumn sky of pink and lead grey
Haze round the streetlights dulls every ray
And warmth ebbs away: this is the day
No talk of weather: I have my say
Love thought immortal was naught but a play
Whose scenes are done and so I must pay
Emotion flies South, cold reason holds sway
Seasons must change, so go your own way
Though long delayed, autumn came today
Yet the birds had known as they flew away
That this was the time, this was the day.
To be honest, a week or two before, as I walked for my morning bus, overhead a v-shaped flight of geese headed steadily away to the South. I thought ‘Ah-ha! The geese are flying South. This means that either our paratroopers are dropping into plucky little Belgium tonight to meet up with the Resistance, OR summer may be over...’ I forgot it then, but two weeks later, suddenly, one morning it was autumn.
The sky was a paler, insipid light blue. The jacket collar came up for the first time. Two Surrey dinkies kettled the windscreen of their little car in our quiet street, laughing softly, intimately. With my hands in pockets and my breath steaming at the bus-stop, I watched every car driver go past, hunched forward to peer through that one area of the windscreen that had properly cleared. (Do we all do that? Like picking our noses at the wheel at traffic lights?) The bus stopped, the door opened and the driver was wearing a cute little woolly hat.
‘Autumn - appearing now at a street near you...’
The driver actually said ‘Hi, Cliff!’ as I got on. Rather surreal, but - hey - I do surreal, so that’s fine. It's the season for changes, anyway...
I don’t think of years ending at the end of December, but rather when autumn shows up on my doorstep. The warmth of summer is finally lost, the plants will die and the world loses a little joy and sparkle. This is really when the year is expended and nearly done. I don’t mind - autumn has a beauty of its own. The wonderful variety of leaf colours. The childish pleasure of kicking up the leaves on woodland paths. Walking with a chill on your cheeks, but simultaneously cosy inside under a quilted jacket and scarf.
But there was one more surprise that morning. As the bus pulled up over a small rise into Cranleigh, low across the common, there was suddenly a massive nuclear explosion that flooded my vision with white, yellow and orange light before I blinked and averted my eyes, the incredibly bright light still ghosted on to my retina. The low early autumn sun shone right in, along the bus, sudden and startling. Why that day? Why do you suddenly notice so many things on one day? Autumn - it catches you out, I tell you.
I wonder if more relationships die in autumn too? Do we sense the time for change?
The very air is different today
A flock of geese flies honking away
Through autumn sky of pink and lead grey
Haze round the streetlights dulls every ray
And warmth ebbs away: this is the day
No talk of weather: I have my say
Love thought immortal was naught but a play
Whose scenes are done and so I must pay
Emotion flies South, cold reason holds sway
Seasons must change, so go your own way
Though long delayed, autumn came today
Yet the birds had known as they flew away
That this was the time, this was the day.
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