Sprinkle me with cinnamon
If any season gets a lot of fan mail, it's surely autumn — but here I am adding to its pile. The cure for wedding blues (when you've been surrounded by all your friends and family and then you're suddenly back at work) is a new season. And not just any season, the best season.
I will most likely carry a sickly pumpkin-spice latte down the street, not because I even enjoy it that much, but because it's there. It represents the best time of year: freshly-sharpened back-to-school pencils, new leather boots with buffed toes, a long-forgotten rain jacket, countryside walks with crunchy leaves, a pub roast at the Spaniards with a log fire and plenty of dogs, a tartan scarf, the promise of Christmas, twinkling lights, an oatmeal sweater, four-wick candles, knee blankets, freshly-pressed green olive oil, pecan pie, the promise of something new.
September is obviously the new year that January isn't: a defined change in the weather as summer exhales its last breath, an exciting leap towards ritual celebrations and a moment of expectation. I will write that novel, I will get a new job, I will walk through the rain, I will run every day of November, I will cook soup every week for lunch, I will cuddle up with those I love; I will, I will, I will.
Some autumns, I have done those things. Most autumns, like most over-hyped things, the promise doesn't live up to the expectation. But every autumn, it doesn't matter. Because every autumn I will have at least one day that's bright and cold, where I can wear the black wool poncho my mother gave me and walk along the canal towards a Sunday roast in decided glee that the weather is perfect, and the world is good, and something nice is coming.
Just one of those days will keep me going for a whole season. I will cling to the idea of berry-stained lips and knee-high boots and wool jackets and belted skirts and patterned tights and newness. I will watch a 40-minute YouTube video of a woman in a new-build in Rugby decorating her house with seasonal dried flowers. I will drink red wine with tiny gherkins at a French bar that reminds me of Paris. I will carry a takeaway coffee round the Heath and eat stews with suet dumplings. I will read Nigel Slater's Christmas Chronicles (which begins in November so still counts), and pat down the crunchy topping of a blackberry and apple crumble before it goes in the oven.
The last time I ate out before November's lockdown last year, I went to The Grafton and had a Sunday roast. I ate salmon en croute with all the trimmings, an incongruous but delicious meal that I kid you not kept me going until Christmas. I wore a perfect pink-brown lip and we met a little dog called Pickle. The memory of that last supper sustained me and gave me hope that we might get to go to the pub and have a life again. I bought a pair of suede boots on sale that November that I never got to wear, but I looked at those boots every day that I missed something: a birthday, a trip to the cinema, a lemon sherbert cocktail, my mother's stuffing, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year.
Some nice things have happened to me in autumn. I met my husband in October. I got a book deal just before the turn into winter. One year I wore a green skirt in Russell Square and called to tell my dad Good News as the leaves fell. Some of the best books come out in September and in a few weeks, my dog turns one.
Autumn reminds me that one day I might be someone who wakes up every morning and writes with a cup of tea, who pulls a marrow from her garden, who wraps up in a scarf and takes her perfect dog on a perfect walk and sits in front of her log fire at night with her perfect husband. Autumn may be the most fetishised of seasons, but with good reason.
These imaginings don't need to be true, because for small moments every year, they are true. I will smell the change of season in the air, I will light a feu de bois Diptyque candle, I will walk my imperfect dog with his perfect little whiskers, I will drink wine with my imperfect husband who makes me perfectly happy.
Every day in autumn, if you want it, a warming cup of tea waits for you, and if you're lucky, so does a bright day, a cold one, a rainy one, a new one. A blank page, an empty pot, an open hand, a new year. Last year the full joys of autumn (people! places!) were cut short. This autumn, they might not be. So go outside and take them. Crush the leaves with your booted feet. Eat and drink all the pumpkin and cinnamon your little heart desires, because it will be short and sweet and you only get one perfect season. This could be it.
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This week I'm eating: Figs and Loire Valley goats cheese, paneer curry, spaghetti with anchovies.