How Do I Hate Thee? Let Me Count the Ways

Diatribe to autumn

Those of us in Blighty-Land are heading irrevocably into autumn, marching helplessly into dark days.

With September having ceded to October, some may say it's already here. Not me. I'm in denial. You can keep your season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, it's all a con, merely winter's waiting room, so my ankles might be cold, but the sandals are still on. For I hate autumn. Loathe. Abhor. Fingers in the ears, La-La-La.

‘Oh nonsense!' my neighbour booms, striding heartily round the garden with armfuls of dead twigs and defeated flowers. ‘Nothing like a good clear out!' She sniffs vigorously like a ghastly PE teacher from the ‘70s eyeing up a bleak hockey field with pleasure, ‘Marvellous!'

‘What about the spiders?' I say a little sulkily, kicking at webs stretched across a dewy lawn.

She looks at me like I am mad. ‘But spiders mean your house isn't damp.'

So bloody what?

I'm all for pointless optimism, but if spiders mean that your house isn't damp, what do rats mean? The thrill that the house is still there, and aren't you lucky that it is, so stop complaining about a little gnawing? What crumbs of comfort are we forced to grab from the bare pantry of disappointment.

‘And the dark mornings, and the dark evenings and the cold?' I venture.

‘Everything has its price.' She glances across sharply, noting me down as one too slack to understand pay offs and possibly not worth talking to at all.

But whereas one could, if strictly necessary, put together a grudging list featuring Marvellous clear outs, bonfires, striding through leaves (pretending you're 6), and rejoicing in wearing a woolly hat; it has to be said that it's all just clutching at straws and making the most of a thoroughly bad job. Being, frankly, British.

Pissing with rain? The garden needs it.

Freezing cold? Kills all the bugs.

Can't see for streaming eyes and dreading the ash dust all over the house? Hush, do, an open fire. Marvellous.

Maybe having been denied a summer - and no, a few happenstance days way back in June weren't enough - makes it worse. The hope is gone. Through late August, into September, one can cling to that hellish emotion: Hope. You know, the one that always lets you down, finishes on a torn up lottery ticket, a brave shrug. No wonder we talk about the weather all the time, we get so much of it; most of it crap.

It's what might be called a marmite season, autumn, a love it or loathe it, but I fear that the lovers are just striking a pose. Or else they're rather dim. Summer just is. But autumn is cruel, a false mistress leading you by the hand, conning you with a few pretty side-effects into the chill, long wind tunnel of winter, step by inexorable step. It needs to be looked at, and denounced, for what it presages, not by scant trinketty charms. Those scraps clung to - the crisp air, a silhouette of a tree, the too little, too late nice days - are just a prelude to grubbing around in the drawer in fruitless search of the second glove; the still days with big skies are overture to frosty windscreens and dank drear teatime and months trapped inside a horrid big coat.

Already they're selling mince pies in the supermarkets, and the Halloween stuff is swelling the shelves. A hop and skip from one faux celebration designed to keep us quiet to another and before we know it, it will be Christmas.

And, hmmm, the days will start lengthening again. The crocuses will be doing their thing. I feel a surge of that stupid hope stirring again.

However, meantime, and before I get too excited, there is one thing given up by autumn. One thing of intrinsic value. And that is conkers. Yes, those cheery chestnuts which one cannot eat. Which you prick your fingers on when forcing open. Which cannot even be played with here in schools now, thanks to bonkers health and safety rules. But it's me you'll see, elbowing the eager kids out of the way in the thrust for more and better. Why? To roll in all the corners. A guard, I'm told, against ... spiders.

Bring on the damp.