It occurs to me that, in not following our Northern American brethren in adopting the word 'Fall' to name the third season of the year, and so instead sticking with the more poetic 'Autumn,' we've done ourselves out of a perfectly good verb. So although today in Lancaster Fall has most definitely fallen (Spring springs, after all) I can't get away with saying that Autumn has Autumned. It just doesn't work.
In fact, Autumn's arrival is pretty sudden, even for slightly-exposed, quite-near-the-Irish-sea, gets-all-the-weather-from-the-coast - and Cumbria - Lancaster. This morning the thermometer in the car, which I don't really trust at the best of times but which for the sake of this post we'll consider to be the most accurate thermometer in the immediate vicinity, possibly the only one in the vicinity, told me that it was 6.5°C. That's not just autumnal. That's positively Wintery.
It's a shame, too, because now that autumn has arrived on our doorstep I'm going to have to think more carefully about what I do around the house. Where before I could wander around any of the rooms in my bare feet, now I'll have to at least consider wearing socks all the time. Given my propensity for losing socks, that means that I'll have to buy more socks just to break even. The office will become the only haven of warmth in the house, kept that way by my PC, the stupendously hot-making lamp, whose bulb I was going to replace with an energy saving one, though I might reconsider it given the turn the temperatures have taken, and the water heater that sits in a cupboard in the corner of the room.
I'll find myself preparing Winter, with its condensation between the window panes and its frosty fingers creeping through every crack and niche. The world will get dark and it'll be even harder to drag myself to the gym in the mornings because it won't even be light by the time we're done working out. I'll find myself wishing, once again, that we had an open fire - or indeed a fire at all, come to that - so that we could snuggle close to it and each other in the evenings and listen to the wind howling outside. The phone line will go down at least once in the next six months, due to cold and ice and rain and driving wind, and BT will once again demonstrate their utter ineptitude whilst repairing it.
All that said, though, for a moment, just a moment, I loved stepping outside this morning. The air was cold, but not freezing, just crisp enough for you to feel it at the back of your nose and the corners of your mouth. There's an earthy smell to the air; the smell of leaves preparing to drop, of grass and hay being cut for the last time, of cows who will soon enough be confined to wintering sheds and who are taking this opportunity to avail themselves of all the biological freedoms that being outside allows them.
In a few weeks it'll get colder still, and there'll be a snap and crackle to the morning air. By mid-October you'll be able to smell bonfire night coming, the air full of smoke and gunpowder and cordite and mulled wine. Writing this has just reminded me that I won't be here for bonfire night, a fact that makes me oddly sad. There's always a good firework display at the castle on the Saturday nearest to November 5th and I'll miss it this year because I'll be in Cambridge, MA, doing work things and for reasons which matter more to them than me our American neighbours don't let off fireworks in Fall, more fool them.
Autumn is here. It has fallen, it has autumned, it is starting to arrive. I'm going to enjoy it.
