Autumn's false promise

Photos

It was a perfect Autumnal day, the sun's rays breaking through the fine wisps of clouds that were strewn across the bright-white-blue sky. Bright icy rays permeating their peaks and gently warmed the back of my neck in the crisp cold. Warm enough that you can still enjoy being outside but cool enough to wear your woolly coat, hat,scarf and gloves. Walking through the reds, golds and yellowing greens of the park; admiring fallen conkers still partially in-utero, in their prickly casing. Surface like polished mahogany, perfect with marbled detail and lustre. The trees gifts to the children whom collect and play with them. Each step producing a crackle and crunch as the dead leaves of summer disintegrate underfoot, the last remains of a long summer, crumbling to dust. 

Courtesy

Autumn is filled with promise, i's rick colours, bounteous seeds, nuts and catkins cascading to the earth, sparking the imagination of the young. The smells of the earth as the leaves wither and die, decompose and become again part of the earth, feeding, fertilising the solid of their matriarchs roots. The smells of burning wood and gun powder that fill the air once Autumn has truly taken hold, grasps us in it's long spindly icy fingers. The tastes of sulphur that occupy the back of your tongue with the sharp intake of breath that follows the explosions of colour and light.

Of My

The cravings for warm, stodgy, comforting foods and the reluctance to venture out of doors in the dark, frosty evenings. Autumns ellipse is a deceptive promise of richness and warmth to come, when really what follows if moths of bleak cold blackness. Months of consumerism gone crazy, screaming spoilt children and luminescent decorations. Followed by a deep slump of darkest depression when the months of cold, dark isolation destitute having spent all your holiday pay-check on cheap plastic frivolity that will only be disregarded a couple of weeks after being unwrapped. The only spark in the distance, the patron saint of smugness, who sold his soul to Clinton's Cards a long time ago. A holiday so remarkable exclusive that everyone not in the throws of copulation feels like throwing them self out of the nearest window. 

Old

But that is still to come, and today is perfect. A brisk, amalgamation of all things bright, fresh, rich and in glorious shades of decay. Today is filled with the effervescence of what is to come. So for today I can forget that I know what comes next, pretend I am still new to this planet and enjoy the fluttering leaves, the gleaming chess-nuts, the glistening damp on the sharp green grass and revel in the foe-naivety of it all. For today is a perfect Autumnal day.

Dad