THE JOURNAL
Illustration by Mr Marcos Montiel
As the sun makes it final round of goodbyes and we move inexorably into autumn, I often like to fume about something written by Mr TS Eliot. The American-born writer was many things – an essayist, a playwright, the world’s greatest poet and so on – but he was a bit of a dolt when it came to the seasons. “April is the cruellest of all months,” Eliot wrote in his poem “The Wasteland”. The only response to which is, “Leave it out!”
As any fool knows, the cruellest of all months is this one we are in now. October and November never did anything for anyone. They are parsimonious months, wedged between the technicolour joys of summer and the icy beauty of winter. Autumn is a fag-end of a season. There is only one good evening in the UK in autumn and that is Bonfire Night, when we throw fireworks about and burn effigies of a 500-year-old Catholic troublemaker. Even then, there’s only so much treacle toffee and candied apples on sticks you can eat in one evening.
The Romantic poet Mr John Keats called autumn a season of “mists and mellow fruitfulness, close bosom-friend of the maturing sun”, something only beaten for inaccuracy by “autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower”, according to the French author Mr Albert Camus. Here we have the problem: people tend to romanticise this time of year. Clearly, those writers never had to trudge to a Tube station on a drizzly night in October. Or sit outside a pub in the driving wind with a particularly annoyed dog, because dogs are not allowed inside.
Those who romanticise autumn will tell you of the raw beauty of leaves falling from trees as they sip ostentatiously from mugs of pumpkin spice latte. They will walk hand in hand with their partner through the park, smiling gormlessly into the middle distance. Those people will probably be called Seb or Lottie. They will own several healing crystals. The truth is, this nothing season is basic and it attracts basic people.
“In the measure of a single autumn day, you can have summer, winter and back to summer again. It is as crafty and unreliable as a mobster rat”
It is also hard to look good in autumn. It is practically impossible to dress for it. If you affect a long mac or a winter coat, then within half an hour it will be 25 degrees and the weathermen will be talking about an Indian summer. If you wear shorts to escape being cooked, then sure as eggs is eggs, by teatime it will be flash floods and hailstorms. With summer and winter, we know where we stand and we can dress accordingly. In the measure of a single autumn day, you can have summer, winter and back to summer again. It is as crafty and unreliable as a mobster rat.
Leaves feature high in the pantheon of autumn-balls. We are supposed to look at them changing from green to brown and reflect on our own mortality. We are supposed to find their gentle fall to the ground somehow touching, a bit noble and beautiful. I am second to no one in my love of trees, but I like them fully clothed in leaves, preferably green.
Have you ever tried to use a leaf blower on a Sunday morning in October or put on a pair of Marigold gloves to remove dying crumples of cellulose from a stubbornly blocked drain? Reader, I have, and oh the filth, slime and dirt of it all. The thing is, if you don’t carry out these tasks, then you soon find those cutesy leaves have conspired to turn your garden path into something slippier than an ice rink and your drains into a pressing biological hazard.
No, no, autumn just won’t do. When the dreaded day comes when the clocks go back on the last Sunday of October, we should not just accept our fate. The only sensible response to the arrival of November is to stay at home, safe from leaves and people drinking pumpkin lattes. Or go abroad. Head to a different hemisphere where the seasons are inverted and you can be full of the joys of spring or summer. We hear Buenos Aires is nice at this time of year.