In between all the Ice Bucket Challenge videos, my Facebook timeline is currently peppered with teachers moaning about the start of the new school year. The calendar has flipped over from August to September, there are no more holiday weekends till Christmas, and the new season of Strictly Come Dancing is a mere five days away. Yep, summer is officially over.
Good.
I’ve written before about why I’m a cold weather person, and I’m not going to go back over old ground now. What I will say is that the start of autumn always feels exciting, in a way that summer never does. Summer creeps up on you, with its innumerable false alarms, until before you know it you’re sweating in stuffy, sticky 25-degree heat for the fourth day in a row, getting ready to murder someone. Autumn tends to arrive with a bit more of a bang; you know where you stand with autumn. The leaves start to fall, along with the apples in my parents’ back garden and the night-time temperature. The football season is in full swing, your line manager returns from holiday to discover how little work you’ve done in his/her absence, and everyone in the office seems to have a cold.
August was a slow month for me; but then August is always a slow month for me. I think it’s a legacy of childhood. From the age of 5 through to 16, or 18, or even 21, we’re not just permitted to switch off our brains for the summer, we’re encouraged to. As a child, and a teenager, August meant long afternoons in front of the TV watching cricket/tennis/golf/athletics/<insert sport here>; or out in the playing field behind our house, arguing with my brother about whose turn it was to bat, until he cried or threw the ball at me and wandered off home. It meant family holidays on French campsites, or visiting grandparents in Devon and Scotland, where my siblings and I hung around the house, listless and sulky, as well-meaning relatives tried to entice us out into the watery British sunshine.
It lingers into adulthood, I think: that summer torpor. I struggled to write anything in August – certainly anything decent – and I don’t think I was alone in that. It’s the dog days, when we all struggle to pull ourselves out of the pub garden, or away from the patio table, or even just out of the comfy chair by the window, which catches the sun. In the summer, I read Grisham and Nesbo and Hornby, because I can plod through them at my own lazy pace, a glass of bone-dry white wine or ice-cold lager beside me at all times. I while away afternoons in the park, and take long lunch breaks down by the river. My head isn’t foggy, but it’s not really clear either. It’s sluggish and indolent; all its edges get rubbed off and blurred by the sunlight.
The arrival of autumn brings with it a jolt of energy and purpose. I find myself walking faster, thinking faster, writing faster. Suddenly I have ideas again. Some of them will work out, some will end up being a bit shit, but it’s comforting to know that they’re starting to drip through to the creative part of my brain, rather than getting clogged up in the summer filter.
It helps that I’m properly horny again. Or maybe it doesn’t help – maybe that’s just part of the same autumnal package. Either way, the holidays are over, and it’s time to get back down to business. Watch this space…
2 replies on “Old leaves, new leaf”
I completely agree. Once the leaves start to turn, I’m in my element. Don’t get me wrong, I like being sticky and sweaty, sometimes. But autumn? Bring it. Bring it now.
[…] good autumnal blog posts around at the moment, both by sex bloggers, such as this one by Guyliner, this one by Exhibit A (although I think this one is better still) and non-sex bloggers […]