I am beginning to wonder if working in a city all my life dulled my sense of the seasons. Like so many, I had swallowed the line that “we don’t have seasons anymore”. Autumn 2016 has reminded me just how wrong that is.
My work those days takes me deep into Somerset and particularly the small villages and towns. In the big city, it is easy just to see the shortening days and the dropping temperatures as a bad thing, but then cities can, in a certain light, seem uniformly grey. In the countryside, even if the sky is grey, nothing else is.
Driving into Wells the other day, I saw the full glory of Britain in autumn. A crisp, clear morning with wisps of cloud intermingling with the albino rainbows of the passing planes. Ahead of me, towards Glastonbury Tor and beyond, the leaves changing colour, presenting a patchwork mosaic that takes your breath away, rising above the gentle mist was Wells cathedral. It was picture postcard perfect.
I was succoured into believing that the only “good” weather could possibly be warm and sunny weather and everything else was “bad” weather. A grumpy minority with too much time on their hands can only complain when the sun is not blazing above, which means they moan pretty well all year round.
Leaving the big city gridlock of Bath, a city that seems to be in perennial need of a power-wash, I passed by small villages on my way east, some buzzing with senior citizens going on their way, others funeral-quiet, but all surrounded in spectacular foliage. I stopped for a while to eat my lunch, sitting on a bench in the middle of nowhere, the only noise being from grazing cattle, birds and the distant swish of the nearest A road. The sun, which is slowly slipping lower by the day, still emits a tangible and welcome warmth. Autumn has been mainly dry and some of the fields looked parched, unbelievable for early November.
The views, high above Bath, were spectacular in all directions, although the city itself was covered in an unmistakable smog, the sort you can taste. No pea souper, but no doubting what it was. The valleys and hills beyond had long lost their early mist, small cottages in the middle of nowhere, accessed by lanes seemingly adequate only for a small motorcycle. I could see a long succession of jet aircraft coming into Bristol Airport, so clear I swear you could see the passengers. On final approach, the noise was minimal, the engines in idle as the plane descended.
Soon, all this beauty will be gone, the trees will be bare and we will be able to see even further to both the near and far distance. If this long, dry autumn is anything to go by, we can expect a long, wet winter because these things all tend to even out. This maritime climate, as my father never tired of reminding me, rarely delivers snow to the west of England.
Then, back to the city, the outskirts of Bristol, more smog, more grey and, yes, a misleading vision of what autumn looks like.
I have seen autumn this week and she is beautiful. I have loved the weather and now know that it’s not all about the heat. In terms of the pictures in my mind, this has been the most beautiful of autumns. Now I understand it, I hope it lasts a while longer.
