Forever Autumn
“The world has changed.
I feel in the water.
I feel it in the earth.
I smell it in the air.”
Thus spoke Arwen, the “Evenstar” as she was also referred to in the book, in the prologue to the first Lord of the Rings movie, The Fellowship of the Ring. I share those sentiments. Today (I am writing this on Saturday) seemed to me to be the first day of autumn proper. I awoke and performed my allotted ritual of creeping downstairs, turning off the alarm and opening the back door into the little porch that leads to where Old Cat sleeps in his lined box, with his wall heater and special slow release of heat disk thingamajig to make sure he is snug. I was a bit late this morning and he had gone off to forage or whatever, but he popped back in through the cat flap as soon as he heard the radio come on. Then I put on the coffee, and Old Cat gets a good and thorough petting before I tempt him with various offers of breakfast. He likes variety. Raw egg was popular this week, but not today. He settled for some packet chicken in gravy in the end, but only after I had sprinkled it with crunchy cat treats called, obviously “Crunch”. For a once-starving stray who has been taken in, he’s a fussy bugger.
And then to the study with a second cup of coffee to start the day. I peered out over the top of my computer screen through the window to a distinctly gloomy half-light, with fog and grey skies. This was in marked contrast to the rather beautiful weather that I have been enjoying over the past week or so. Thursday was particularly beautiful, with an astonishing sunset that blazed red-gold in a cloudless sky, yet whilst the air remained cool, still, and fresh. Sadly I didn’t have my camera with me to catch the moment, and on a more prosaic note I was driving to the supermarket at the time so I couldn’t record the sight. I decided to try and put that right, and took some shots (one of which appears above).
It seems to me that the seasons have changed a little. I mentioned this Zara. She’s a smart young lady from Poland who works in a café near the library I go to, and which provides me with half decent coffee and very good WiFi and an advantageous sight for people watching. She’s training to be deputy manager of something. She has a sharp face, not at all in an unkind way, simply rather chiselled, coupled with bright-as-a-button eyes and a work ethic. She’s one of those people you know as soon as you meet that they are pretty smart and also hard-working. For some reason we were talking about the weather and how remarkably sunny it was, and I put forward my suggestion that the seasons had changed. She looked at me as though I was a child who had just offered some simple fact as an earth-shattering discovery. Of course they have, she said.
What seems to have happened is that summer has got a bit duller and wetter – not always I grant you, but this is an overall thing – but that in late September and October we have a pattern of what we used to call “Indian Summers”. More traditional autumn weather is then shunted into November and December, and winter kicks-in in January-February. I first noticed this a few years ago when my beloved and dearest friend Dr. Firenza Pesta came over from the USA to visit me in early October. One day we took a walk round a local “beauty spot”, a series of reservoirs in the low Pennines (Dovestones, near Saddleworth Moor in the low Pennines, if you want to know):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dovestone_Reservoir
I have known the place since I was a child, and had always thought of it as a perfectly adequate but functional spot for getting a bit of air and maybe going for a run or a walk, but no great shakes. But this day the land and positively glowed in the distinctly golden light, it was if it had been suddenly crowned with beauty. It felt like a different place. The hills, rocks and moorland seemed to glow with an extraordinary luminary quality. The same light persisted as we enjoyed a glorious day in York.
I have been struggling to describe the quality of the light I am trying to describe. Molten gold might do, but not quite. It is gentler than the glare of a July day, a softer light tinged with shades of amber and red, depending on the time of day. I do not remember this as a boy. Perhaps it is just my memory. But I have a theory that as well as a shift in the pattern of the seasons, the light – at least around here – has improved because we no longer have the smoke from the coal fires and factories that I remember as a lad. Indeed, the “pea souper” fogs that I can remember have gone too. Of course, for many, Autumn is the most beautiful of seasons. The red and gold and brown of the leaves and the relative gentleness of the climate make it very attractive. There is something else, which I can’t quite put my finger on. It is almost a sense of excitement, of something impending on the way. That seems odd, because what is on the way is winter. Maybe it is like a surge of adrenalin you might get as a diver, up on the highest board, about to take the long plunge.
Maybe it is because the colour of the leaves remind me of my first love’s glorious auburn hair. Dr Pesta, who knows me better than anyone, once told me she learned more about me and my background from a few blogs than she had from twenty-five years of friendship. I can see her point. I had gone up to University in the aftermath of a heady and ultimately disastrous first love affair at 18. It was a white-hot furnace of a relationship, and the disaster part was largely down to me. I was damaged goods, with a very deeply wounded soul (yes, I think that is the right word) and I had the shutters up, or down, as you will, but in any case very firmly. It was a wound which never properly healed, and was to have a permanent impact on my life in many ways, most of it unwelcome and often red-headed too. It was also a wound which was to be ripped wide apart again in my late 30’s, and it nearly destroyed me, but that is another matter.
I feel I shall do something brave this afternoon. I have already done my statutory hour at the gym, but I shall go for a walk, down by the river where I used to walk with that love, and near the hotel where we once stayed and we made love. For many, many years I have avoided such places. The guilt and loss were too great. But the idea has come into my head. I have taken a course in “Nordic Walking”. It’s a long-term strategy to balance gym work with some good old-fashioned fresh air without doing in my knees and hips by running. So I shall take my walking poles and do the walk, revisiting the steps we used to call “cardio hill”. And then I shall return, sip my Pinotage and watch the rugby. It was never my game, and I can’t pretend any great knowledge, but I admire the physicality and intensity of it, as well as the strategy. And then I shall fix Old Cat some supper.
I was having a chat with our landlord Petunia this week. As I said to him, my life has gone in many unexpected and sometimes painful directions. But a thought popped into my heard one day. What if all that had been necessary to bring me to this place and time, in this state of mind, so I could find and look after a struggling, frightened and abandoned cat, and give him a home. Would that not be, in its own way, a magnificent purpose? I think it would.
To end, there are of course many autumn songs which invoke that season to suggest melancholy and love’s losses. Probably the most famous is the very beautiful “Forever Autumn” by Justin Hayward, taken from Jeff Wayne’s “War of the Worlds.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsCdlX-5UjE
But, beautiful, evocative and heartbreaking as it is, there is one outstanding song. I won’t listen to it gain, it is too poignant, and I would only cry – the late, great Eva Cassidy, singing “Autumn Leaves.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXBNlApwh0c
I am off for my walk. Wish me well, and have a lovely autumn day.
Gildas The Monk
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October 4, 2015 at 10:12 am -
I could find and look after a struggling, frightened and abandoned cat, and give him a home
There are worse epithets, worse Indian Names than ‘He Who Wipes Up Cat Puke’. Enjoy your walk, unfortunately I shall have to walk up to
MordorThe Dark PlaceTesco. -
October 4, 2015 at 10:15 am -
I can remember my first ever school assembly still – September ’78 – due mainly thanks to the hymn we sang (which was also my first ever experience of hymn singing), ‘Look For Signs That Summer’s Done’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxXJaeDGhHk
The following year they has us walk in to the first assembly of the Autumn Term to ‘Forever Autumn’, which being a contemporary pop song of just over a year old, was very unusual. -
October 4, 2015 at 10:53 am -
October 4, 2015 at 10:57 am -
Now is the winter of our discount-tentThe Shakespeare Camping Company circa 1987
Just to chuck some more seasonal musings into the mix; We all talk about the ‘Arab Spring’ but few outside Germany know of the ‘German Autumn’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Autumn. Seems relevant today, today being the 25th +1 Birthday of the BundesRatbag.
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October 4, 2015 at 11:44 am -
What if all that had been necessary to bring me to this place and time, in this state of mind, so I could find and look after a struggling, frightened and abandoned cat, and give him a home. Would that not be, in its own way, a magnificent purpose? I think it would.
Beautiful.
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October 4, 2015 at 9:25 pm -
Thank you.
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October 4, 2015 at 11:58 am -
What a superb piece of writing. Poignancy and hope, acute observation of detail and wonder at the bigger picture. Almost an encapsulation of so much of human existence for so many of us.
I’m not sure the seasons are changing that much. I know I’ve changed, over the years. I see details much more now I’m older, and I’m more inclined to ‘stand and stare’ as W H Davies put it in his famous poem. When I was younger, I noticed that the leaves were turning, but I wouldn’t have bothered to look for the shades of colour, or the play of light on an autumnal tree. Maybe you have other things on your mind when you’re a teenager or in your twenties. Maybe once you’re a bit older, you’ve experienced more seasons, and are more attuned to their subtle differences from year to year. Whatever the reasons, there is definitely a sort of quiet contentment that comes from noticing such things, and taking the time to observe and enjoy them.
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October 4, 2015 at 9:10 pm -
Thank you Engineer. I will tell you a secret. That “took it out of me”. It was intensely personal. And the walk did too, to a degree.
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October 4, 2015 at 12:22 pm -
There’s even more too it, as we don’t always live in the same place, and geography and geology affect the visual signs of autumn too.
The world seems a warmer place than it did in my childhood, but then my father’s car had no heater, and I went to school in the north of England on the bus or walked in all weathers, clad in the thin clothing of the post-war era and desperately thin as most of us were. Now, living in the south of England, in a centrally heated house and with a modern car outside the front door, and bodily insulated by the sort of stuff that whales use to stay warm in the Arctic, I just know there has been a big change – but in me, not in the world at large.
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October 4, 2015 at 12:52 pm -
Aged 7 my so called ‘parents’-in a bid to escape the HOT Weather , fondue soirees & wife swapping parties of England proper– cruelly moved me up to the ancestral Town in Norfolk, on the North Sea coast . I am not exaggerating when I say after just one summer in Norfolk I haven’t felt warm again since. Used to think it was just me but over the years a lot of fellow diasporans have said the same. Despite, agas, central heating, rayburns, Icelandic jumpers (it was the 70s!), ‘Schnorkel’ Parkas (like I said 70s, storage heaters, foreign holidays and sojourns abroad the rule seems to be ‘move to Norfolk and despair of ever feeling warm again’.
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October 4, 2015 at 3:44 pm -
So much for Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming being actually felt by humans then.
I guess that the wife-swappers of other parts of England probably felt relieved that they weren’t in Norfolk, where the equivalent seems to have been to turn one’s attentions to a different sister (or brother if you are female). In Ireland, was the equivalent to give oneself to a different priest?
You were lucky in the 70s, as by then you had Polyester ! Was your sojourn in 1976, by any chance? (The famously dry year). I went on holiday that year to somewhere where it pissed down with rain for 3 solid weeks, and people knew I’d been somewhere exotic because I didn’t have a sun tan!
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October 4, 2015 at 4:55 pm -
“So much for Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming being actually felt by humans then.”
It’s only one degree Celsius so far in England. The temperature changes by more than that from hour to hour, so I don’t see how anybody could directly detect it. You would notice ten degrees.
One feature of British winters are that there are often times when the temperature is hovering around the freezing point. A rise of one degree could make a difference to how many nights have an actual frost, or how long frost stays on the ground in the morning.
The only way to detect warming is to take many measurements and look at the running average over decades.
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October 4, 2015 at 1:28 pm -
The light is wonderful at present.
Afternoon drives home from Chichester; boring dual carriageway then on my favourite route, Whiteways, Houghton, Amberley, the Downs, clear sky and pin sharp scenery with that orange glow of late summer.
In October!
And later the fingers of pink in the sky.
A privilege to be here. -
October 4, 2015 at 1:56 pm -
It was a magnificent purpose Gildas and The Old Cat is very glad that you fulfilled it.
Taking care of an old cat is a very important thing to do.
I only wish more would take the kind way.-
October 4, 2015 at 9:10 pm -
*bows*
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October 4, 2015 at 2:12 pm -
I use my camera far more from September – April than during the summer. Essentially it is the light I try to capture rather than the physical thing that’s in my viewfinder, as that is just there to show the light. That is, when looking after our cats doesn’t occupy the time, as moggies are ALWAYS the priority.
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October 4, 2015 at 4:45 pm -
Perhaps your old cat is just as much a manifestation of God as an old person, and indeed as every other existent thing. If there is a God, and if It is infinite, how could that not be so?
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October 4, 2015 at 9:13 pm -
Brilliant!
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October 4, 2015 at 7:05 pm -
Lovely piece Gildas, thank you.
Some time ago, when my mother’s illness was it’s early stages, she and I were talking about the weather and the seasons. We decided that as there were 4 seasons and 12 months the year should be divided thus;
March = Early Spring
April = Mid Spring
May = Late Spring
June = Early Summer
July = Mid Summer
August Late Summer
September = Early Autumn
October = Mid Autumn
November = Late Autumn
December = Early Winter
January = Mid Winter
February = Late Winter-
October 4, 2015 at 7:45 pm -
Except in Norfolk where :
March = Cold & Wet (‘drought of Match’?! Chaucer did NOT live in Norfolk).
April = Cold & Wetter
May = Wet & Gray
June = Long wet and gray afternoons
July = There should be a law against that horrible red thing being in the sky drying up the rain for a whole 2 days a year!
August = Liquid Sunshine
September = “haarves’ toime jist a dogdin’ thur rairn and ‘ractors boo-i”
October = Long dark wet evenings spent playing family games.
November = There is nothing but the North Sea between us and Siberia
December = From Putin With Love
January = 2 snow flakes bring the A11 to a standstill for 48 hours
February = Cold slushy grey Wet-
October 4, 2015 at 9:27 pm -
We must assume those October evening ‘family games’ in Norfolk are the ones which involve excessive proximity between siblings and something long, dark and wet. On the upside, it gives the farmyard animals a break, I suppose.
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October 5, 2015 at 8:39 am -
I think February is the first month of Spring. The weather is still bad, but the snowdrops start to appear, the first lambs are born, and the earliest nesting birds such as ravens are busy.
So I have Spring as Feb, March, April; Summer May, June, July; Autumn August, September, October; Winter Nov, Dec, Jan.
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October 4, 2015 at 7:46 pm -
March not Match of course…apologies to any Middle English scholars.
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October 4, 2015 at 8:01 pm -
What a beautiful, inspirational essay.
I made a decisión based on something you wrote. I moved back from Spain and now live in Wales. I’m so happy I can’t find the words.
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October 4, 2015 at 9:22 pm -
Wow. I am moved. Deeply moved.
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October 4, 2015 at 8:31 pm -
Red hair and love lost, or thrown away. Through foolishness or negligence or own deliberate fault. And more than once. Yes…
Do you know the original (French) of that song? Most famously by Yves Montard. And I loved both versions of the Thomas Crown Affair…
On a happier note: I’ve been working on my roof, in between inconvenient spells of the “proper” job. It has been so lovely during this blocking high, and the view from 30′ up is wonderful. Today, as the sun was thinking of setting, I saw the Vulcan disappearing into the distance, escorted by a (not sure) Spitfire, on the Vulcan’s final flight. Almost an “I watched c-beams glitter in the dark…” moment. And the dusk aerobatic display by the bats in the last week has been amazing.
Now though the high has gone; there is a change coming in the weather and Autumn is fast here – Christmas soon! (there, I mentioned the “C” word).
Have you tried Old Cat on sardines??-
October 4, 2015 at 9:03 pm -
Don’t mean to be arguable but have you lived with a cat?
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October 4, 2015 at 9:55 pm -
lived with a cat?
Several times, and now occasionally do “cat sitting” for a friend/former tenant. Cat comes to visit as she knows the place, and sardines are the most loved (and forbidden) snack. Another friend, a neighbour, uses them as a tempting treat to persuade old cats to eat more (and to tempt younger ones back in from the wide and mouse filled yonder). It seems to be the tomato sauce that is the best bit (reportedly by 80% of those cats who expressed a preference).
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October 4, 2015 at 8:38 pm -
The earth spins on its axis, tilted at 23.44º and varies between ~ 22.1 and 24.5º, hence one pole is directed towards the Sun, while the other points away and as we sweep around our course in the Solar system – seasonally speaking, Milankovitch cycles notwithstanding.
Our satellite rotates – in precision of at perfect distance and tide waits not for thee, with the sun eclipsed by the moon and in turn the earth eclipses the moon, what harmonious alignment is this?
Human beings change though, memories fade where radiant some glow, of fondly cherished in bonded warmth, ever gliding to a golden russet, in the sunset. Time so ephemeral, fleeting as is the day, the nights grow long and chill, to bleak midwinter’s beckon.
A digital blink, in the enormity, an eternity of analogue.
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October 4, 2015 at 9:09 pm -
/applause
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October 4, 2015 at 9:15 pm -
Seconded
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October 4, 2015 at 9:19 pm -
Beautiful essay, I am looking after my own elderly cat who has been fortunate in never knowing hardship but it’s hard to see her grow old, she was so beautiful . She is the last cat my husband and I had together and he loved her dearly. I have another two but they have been acquired after he died. It is lovely the old cat has found a home with you.
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October 4, 2015 at 9:26 pm -
But she is loved. And no act of love is wasted. Animals know this more than people.
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October 4, 2015 at 9:20 pm -
And will the last person to read the post please turn off the lights. Meanwhile, for anyone who needs a lullaby – and we all do, now ande again – here is one, for grown ups. Kate Rusby: Who Now Will Sing Me Lullabies.
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October 4, 2015 at 9:43 pm -
*Click*. Lucky Old Cat.
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October 4, 2015 at 9:42 pm -
For a sensitive cat-lover, you can be a cruel man at times, Gildas.
Those of us who suffer the blight of colour-blindness (in my case 97.5%) find autumn a most baffling time – everyone rabbits on about the beautiful changes in the landscape’s palette, the leaves burnishing to gold and the wonders of the autumnal light, but it only serves to highlight what we ‘defectives’ miss with our invisible disability. Your otherwise delightful text is quite incomprehensible in all its tonal adjectives.
I believe you all in your enthralled descriptions of what you observe, I just wish that for once before I shuffle off to my miserable monochrome mausoleum I could finally see this apparently vibrant world of colour as you other folks see it – my own red-letter day. -
October 4, 2015 at 10:18 pm -
“…in late September and October we have a pattern of what we used to call “Indian Summers”.
I’m confused: So we’ve been having weather that we used to have, that we previously gave a name to. Doesn’t that mean that nothing has changed? The weather in Britain is always relatively mild but can’t be relied upon.
Photographs that I would have liked to have taken: Driving towards a copse of beech trees with golden leaves, back-lit by the setting sun, on Friday afternoon. Oh, and the German tour bus disappearing into the distance after nudging my car’s rear wing a few weeks ago!
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October 5, 2015 at 9:39 am -
For a few years, when I was a very young child, we lived in Ohio. The seasons there, at that time, conformed very closely to the hypothetical 4-way split. Spring was particularly spectacular there.
My current location, like everything else about me, is a carefully guarded government secret. (Actually, it is a habit of caution that I adopted as a result of participation in putting some very nasty & vengeful persons into the prisons cells they so richly deserved to inhabit, which I adopted long before there was an internet). I am considerably further to the north and west, now.
Here, “Indian Summer” has always been the norm in September & early October. Winters run closer to 6 months than 4, spring doesn’t properly come on until May generally. Over the last 2 decades, brief periods of record heat during summer and record cold during winter have become quite common, and between these extremes the whole year is becoming one long homogenous “season”. I’m not kidding. It’s not uncommon to have periods in the teens (celcius) in December or January. There is less snow in the winter and less rain in the summer, overall, but more periods of intense winter blizzard or summer floods. I dunno what to make of it, frankly.
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