Seasons

I love autumn.

After the heat of the summer, the cooling air is so refreshing. But it’s not yet bitterly cold because the energy of the sun absorbed by the earth over the last few months still maintains an underlying warmth so we can wander around in T-shirts but without that feeling of oppressive heat that characterises July and August. We’ve had a couple of fantastic weeks here in London when we’ve been able to bask in the gentle sunlight in the garden without burning to a crisp or gasping for air. But it’s distinctly colder now and you can feel the radiating warmth from the earth slowing dying down.

It’s not just this sense of being air-conditioned while the sun shines that I love. September here in the northern hemisphere is the time for new beginnings - even as the year is waning. It’s the time that the new school year starts and my first experience of September in the UK was coming to London in 1975 to start my first term at a British boarding school. It was all so new and different from Malaysia. I was excited, scared, nervous, curious and full of wonder all at the same time - at this new country, the pale people, the different way of doing things and at the new adventure lying ahead of me. This September mingling of warmth and coolness always reminds me of that time.

And I guess each year, it’s not just the school kids and students who start new adventures in September. This is the time when everyone else also comes back from their summer holidays, refreshed and reinvigorated. The streets of London noticeably fill up again after the summer lull and the traffic is worse - that part of September I really dislike! Projects that have been postponed over the August holiday period get picked up again. There’s a sudden spurt of activity as people catch up with each other.

I often feel energised in the autumn. I’ve started running again - I had been finding it awfully painful trying to keep that up over the summer because of the heat and now, the cool air makes plodding round the park so much more bearable. I’m starting a new book project - which, fingers crossed, if all goes well, will come to something: more on that next week after a meeting that I’m having with my editor at Kogan Page… There’s a round of talks I’m scheduled to give as well as a bunch of social activities with friends. Yes, autumn is the time of new beginnings.

I’m struck by how the changing seasons really influences the way we mark time here in the temperate zone. The financial year is marked out in quarters and the legal marker dates for leases and quarterly payments fall on traditional feast days that celebrated each distinct season. When planning medium to long term projects in the business world, there seems to me a natural tendency to think in three month chunks. In our daily lives, we look forward to or plan for Christmas, Easter, the school holidays in July and the time when people are back from their holidays in September. We notice the winds and rain or storms during the “in between” seasons of autumn and spring. We grumble about the rain in winter - and also the rain in summer. We look back at our lives in seasons - “I remember around Easter last year…” or “Aaah, the summer of 1976…” (famous for its long heatwave).

I’ve never lived in Malaysia as an adult although I grew up there - it’s on the equator and has a warm tropical climate year round. I’ve also never lived in a place like California where there seems to be perpetual sunshine and an even temperature. I wonder how I would mark time if I were to migrate there? How would I remember my past if it all looks and feels like one season? Would I miss the variety of having a different ambient world every three months - and the opportunity to have a change of wardrobe every few months? Or would I just embrace the year round sameness and be glad that I were no longer in rainy London?

Photo: thanks to hichako from flickr.com (CCL)