Beginning

It's probably the autumnal weather that has prompted me to write here again after so long. That and the fact that there are at least two other things that I should be writing which are both important and urgent.

A lot has happened since May 2012 - I finished one course and then started and finished another, I moved to Swindon and Syd the cat retired to the seaside, where he is indulged with frequent meals and near-constant company. 

I had a three hour coach journey yesterday and saw gigantic tractors harvesting crops in the dark. This end of summer the days are shortening and it's getting cold. I had an enormous book with me but ended up listening to the reassuring voice of Donald Macleod telling me about Handel and looking out of the window. After it was dark I started listening to A Brief History of Being Cold, which is one of my favourite things ever - if it was a book I'd keep it by my bed in the emergency/insomnia pile. One to listen to again, in the deep winter.

The job I moved for will end soon (as anticipated) and new plans are underway. There are jumpers in the shops again, proper ones, in dark colours and made of wool, and there are enormous blackberries in the hedge by the path to where the bats are. A good time to begin.

Seasonal poetry

Poetry is one of my big cultural gaps.  Although there are poems I can recite from memory, they tend to be of the rhyming and amusing variety.  (If we ever meet and conversation flags, you can test me on Matilda, Who told Lies and was Burned to Death by Hilaire Belloc.)  It's probably that it's mainly a bit much for me - I have a particular aversion to anything poignant, which pretty much writes off a great deal of all art, and particularly poetry.  When I think about changing seasons, though, I do think of Frost at Midnight by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 

I have tried to learn copperplate calligraphy, which is as pesky to do as it is lovely to look at.  One of my efforts was to write out the last section of this beautiful poem, which Coleridge wrote for his son, Hartley, in which he describes how Hartley's rural upbringing will make him a child of nature, and influence his imagination:

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

Frost at Midnight by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Richard Holmes, who wrote one of my favourite books, The Age of Wonder, wrote a two-part biography of Coleridge.  It is very sad, but incredibly interesting and very moving.  I recommend it heartily. 

Listing / Learning

It would be nice to think that we are due an Indian summer, but at the moment I'm sitting in front of a light box, which will hopefully convince my body clock that it is not a time for hibernation.  September is a time of new beginnings, new stationery, new projects and excellent food, but this year it is feeling damp and cold.  I want to make pumpkin soup and knit, and not do much else.   

Over the summer I read "The Sword in the Stone":

"But in the Old England there was a greater marvel still.  The weather behaved itself.
In the spring, the little flowers came out obediently in the meads, and the dew sparkled, and the birds sang.  In the summer it was beautifully hot for no less than four months, and, if it did rain just enough for agricultural purposes, they managed to arrange it so that it rained while you were in bed.  In the autumn the leaves flamed and rattled before the west winds, tempering their sad adieu with glory.  And in the winter, which was confined by statute to two months, the snow lay evenly, three feet thick, but never turned into slush."  T.H. White, The Sword in the Stone

This is a great description of how we sometimes imagine the past to have been, although the winters certainly used to be colder in the Little Ice Age.  And this year there has been some kind of summer, albeit sporadically.  In 1816, 'the year without a summer', volcanic eruptions and low solar activity led to a cold, damp year.  Food shortages followed, leading to famine, civil disruption and disease.  Taking an umbrella on a day out is hardly that bad really. 

(The gardens at Arundel Castle, August 2011)

One of the reasons why I wanted to read The Sword in the Stone (apart from the Disney film), is that I read a quote from it in an interview on Gretchen Rubin's great site the Happiness Project.

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something.  That is the only thing that never fails.  You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds.  There is only one thing for it then - to learn.  Learn why the world wags and what wags it.  That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting."  Also T.H. White, The Sword in the Stone

And learning is what September is all about.   

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!” (And fireworks, parsnip soup and knitwear)

Watch this space, for soon there will be bears. First I must find them though, so in the meantime here is my list of things that are good about autumn. You might (and probably will) disagree. You might even disagree that it is autumn at all yet, deluding yourselves that it is “late summer”, but if every season is three months long, then we have to be in autumn (September, October, November) now, so that winter (December, January, February) has Christmas in it. You may yet disagree that seasons have to be regimented into three month blocks, and/or that a season has to start on the first of the month - you may be following the Irish calendar, for example. Still, whenever you think it starts it is (or shortly will be) upon us like a big warm snuggly jumper.
(NB Clearly this only applies to the northern hemisphere, and, given the weather-related assumptions, coldish bits of the northern hemisphere.)

1. Food
This would probably be first on my list of best things about any season, but autumn food is particularly fantastic. This is, after all, a time to prepare for hibernation. It is also a time where you don’t have to worry too much about getting your thighs out in public (see 2 below). I’m thinking tea and cake, soups, stews, pies, roasted things, apples, pumpkins, chickpeas, blackberries, parsnips, beans and lentils. My current favourite cold-weather recipe is this (the chickpea one). Yum.

2. Clothes
Lots of them. Tights and jumpers and scarves and hats and gloves and jeans and shirts and coats and socks and boots and cardigans and pyjamas. I did read somewhere once that black opaque tights were like oysters, in that they shouldn’t be worn in a month without an R, although oysters should never be worn, and I don’t advise eating tights either. This summer, however, black-tight-wearing has been pleasingly acceptable, maybe because the weather has been less than scorching, but mostly I think because of the footless tights thing. Still, enough of the floaty, summery, hotpanty season, hello to knitwear. Which leads me on to…..

3. Knitting
I don’t knit in the summer, not if it’s hot anyway. Last autumn I knitted some of these, having been given some rather excellent wool for my birthday. This autumn I am knitting a long overdue present. And probably some more wrist-warmers.

4. Autumn/Winter pubs
...are Victorian, probably red, wooden, warm, maybe with a fire and sell proper beer. In Brighton and Hove, see the Cricketers, the Great Eastern, the Constant Service or the Greys.

5. Gigs (not festivals)
Indoors, warm, dry, beer, easy access to toilets, going home after – mmmmmm. Having said that I appear to have no gig tickets lined up at all. Tsk. I would like to see Cajun Dance Party but they keep playing when I cannot see them. Any suggestions gratefully received.

6. Fireworks
Although not those set off during daylight hours and selected for their decibels, rather than aesthetic appeal. I absolutely love fireworks though. I used to have a program where you could click on a black screen and randomly coloured and sized fireworks would explode, but now the nearest I can find is this. Still, the real thing is much better, in a duffel coat and with a sneaky hip flask preferably.

7. Trees
Because they look like this.