It is not often I quote the work of Dylan Thomas in this occasionally semi-humorous blog, but today that’s exactly exactly what I am going to do, although I am using it in the wrong context. Bear with me. Every year, without fail, I try to make summer last forever, or at least for as long as I can string it out. You know the sort of thing. Sitting outside pubs having a pint, spending time in the back garden drinking my morning coffee and later my afternoon tea, wearing sunglasses at every opportunity even when it’s not particularly sunny, eating salads and – The Big One – wearing shorts. I am raging at the dying of the light.
My short-wearing days usually begin around April. I am not known as a particularly snappy dresser, indoors or out, so it’s either scruffy old clothes indoors and slightly less scruffy newer clothes outdoors. But as the seasons change and winter turns to spring, something clicks inside my brain. The evenings are stretching out – sometimes it’s still light at 6.30pm – and while the central heating still clanks into action, as far as I am concerned it’s time to take a deep dive into my clothes cupboards and find some shorts and three-quarters to wear.
My partner looks at me as if I am slightly mad, insisting that it is far too early to unveiling my lily-white legs to a non-waiting world. She has a point, too. A quick top-up shop in the local supermarket means braving temperatures that force sensible people to wear thick coats and sturdy trousers. And here I am, walking around a freezing cold Sainsbury’s, wearing a T shirt, shorts and sandals, with a North Face thermal top covering the top half of my body. I can almost hearing her saying: “You’re kidding yourself. You look a complete idiot.” Returning to the car, with a bag full of winter warming food items – hearty soups and all the rest of it – I rub my hands together and turning the heating on. However, I am too proud to admit that I have got it all wrong. The same as ever year. But back to Dylan Thomas.
Dylan, as I know him, wrote this:
“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
As I said earlier, Dylan was referring to the “dying of the light” as being the time before death, which as I am getting so old, is not exactly something I don’t occasionally think about. My dying of the light is more of the literal type, the light of spring, summer and early autumn, with added warm temperatures, which enable me to perpetrate the illusion, at least to myself, that I can wear my shorts forever. And like death itself, I am trying to avoid the need to wear seasonal appropriate clothing for as long as possible. While today’s temperature is likely to max out a balmy 20c, 68f in old money, reality has arrived.
I am meeting an old friend today to watch a rugby union match under the floodlights in a city not too far away. Had it been the usual afternoon kick off, I might have got away with some form of shorts or three-quarters, but it isn’t. Presumably, for televisual purposes, the kick off has been put back until 5.30pm and by the end it will probably be pitch dark or close to it. I might just get away with more modest clothing but I note that by the close of play, with a train journey to follow, it will be more than slightly chilly. Nearly two months before the meteorological winter begins, I may need to “lay out my winter clothes”, as Paul Simon so astutely put it in his epic song, The Boxer and accept reality.
At least the additional clothing will provide me with more pockets in which to store things. Being minimalist means I have usually have nowhere to store sunglasses – like I am going to need them today – reading glasses, my ear pods case and perhaps something to read on the way home. Every cloud and all that.
Not being quite warm enough is a common theme for this time of the year. I am still wearing my shorts indoors and, until today outdoors too, including a trip into town yesterday afternoon and evening. I now have to wear ankle socks and a warm top and I am increasingly aware that I am beginning to look a bit, or perhaps a lot, of a dick. It all ends this afternoon.
It’s such a palaver (or should it be pullover?) although I know that I will get used to the new reality of the world as soon as that first pint barely touches the sides this afternoon and I clutch a nutritious pre match bag of chips.
I can rage against the dying of the light only for so long. I only pretend that autumn, or winter as I call it, is not really here until I am so bloody cold that I can barely feel my fingers and toes. The 3rd October 2026 is definitely the beginning of the end of summer clothing. For the next few weeks, it will be a combination of two styles of clothing because I am so stubborn, or maybe just stupid. Soon it will be woolly hats, thick fleeces and my sturdy old jeans. Until then, I’m off to sit in the garden to drink my coffee. Oh hang on, it’s raining. Well, maybe tomorrow? There’s always tomorrow, at least until there isn’t.
Now where are my thermal gloves?
