As Autumn turns to Winter

The last few days have seen a slight change in the weather, with colder days and nights. In fact we've had to have the heating on low for a few hours on several occasions, and this serves to remind me that the Autumn, which I probably love the best, is slowly petering out in order to make way for Winter. 

Winter is rather a bully I think, in the manner in which it blusters and forces its way in to our lives, crushing the warmer days of Autumn, with the reds and golds being consigned to the scrap heap as the starkness of Winter takes over. Yet, despite this bullying attitude, there is something quite majestic about all that Winter brings with it. Cold days, yes, but then the cold clears away the many bugs and germs that would otherwise lay us low in our beds for days at a time, and so the cold  ---  which after all, we can wrap up against --- should perhaps be welcomed rather than shunned.


The onset of cold, darker evenings also brings to mind so many things and occasions from past years as well. Things like the way in which the neon lighting of the shops reflects on wet roads and pavements, and the manner in which your breath seems to hang in the air as you hurry about, much quicker than you did in the balmy days of Summer and Autumn, as though spurred on by the remembered thought of roaring fires in the hearth and a plate of hot soup on the table.


Do you remember, dear reader, (at least, those of you who live in Western climes), the way that ice would form on the inside of bedroom windows during the Winter months, back in the days before central heating. And what about travelling on the top of a double-decker bus when the heating either didn't work or was distinctly inadequate, allowing ice to form on the inside of the windows and causing you to shiver throughout your journey homeward. Jumping out of bed on a Winter's morning usually meant that you got cold feet on the linoleum, unless you were fortunate enough to enjoy the luxury of a rectangular rug alongside your bed. 


Even if the fire had been lit in the dining room and lounge it was unlikely that any heat from that would have travelled upward, and so bathing meant standing in a freezing cold bathroom, and certainly no lingering under a hot shower when we were children. Breakfast was more substantial as a child than it tends to be today, with many people now hurrying down a slice or two of toast and a cup of tea or coffee, before rushing to get to school or work in time. As a child, breakfast in the Winter was a steaming plate of hot porridge which would, so our mother informed us, put a good lining on our stomachs which would "set us up against the cold." Nor was that all, for it would be followed by a fried breakfast according to your taste, which included bacon, eggs, sausage, tomato and, on special occasions, perhaps a few mushrooms. 


Mushrooms! I recall many an Autumnal morning as a boy, spent walking across the nearby fields, paper bag in hand, looking for mushrooms, the clinging morning mist swirling around me and making my clothing damp. The dew was heavy on the grass which guaranteed cold hands as you reached down to pick the white buttons that promised such delight to your taste-buds in another hour. Once I got home and they were prepared and served up on a slice of toast, the experience of collecting them was one to be savoured for the joy it ultimately gave rather than remembered for the cold and the damp that accompanied the experience.


There was something very special about being out on the land in the early hours, at a time when often even the birds, after their jubilant dawn chorus, seemed to fall silent, perhaps cowed by the mist that enveloped everything. The feeling that you got as you walked across the fields was one of isolation from the world, and yet fearlessly at one with your surroundings. No longer were you an alien traveller, more just another integral part of the changing landscape, and that made you appreciate the world a little more.


What is it that makes us turn our thoughts back to our youth as we get older? Is it that, in retrospect, our youth often seems to be a more secure place to be, particularly nowadays, the way that the world has become a more violent place to be. Many folk now become part-time prisoners in their own homes as a result of the fear of venturing out at night, whether the fear is a necessary reality or an imagined one. Perhaps it's just that time tints our memories to rose-coloured so that we filter out the bad and recall only the good times, places and events. Whatever the reason, I guess that stored memories that can be recalled and that have the ability to allow us to relive times past for a few moments once again, are a valuable asset, bringing with them the feelings of love and warmth from early childhood once again. They allow you to recall, with comparative ease, parents and siblings, schoolteachers and shopkeepers, and the friends who helped to build you into the person you became by the influences that they had on your life.


Yes, it's true that I love the Autumn the best, with its ornate display of finery and flashes of Autumnal sunshine, but I guess that every other season is pretty close on Autumn's heels, because each season has something special to give to us. Learning how to find it and appreciate it is one of the greatest and yet simplest joys of living.