TIME FOR SOME MELLOW FRUITFULNESS

It’s official and it's in the papers, so there's no denying it... We in the UK have, apparently, just enjoyed the longest, hottest summer EVER! Well, at least since 1659, although David, not unreasoanbly, questions how good their thermometers were then - or, indeed, their eyesight...

Anyway, the phenomenal summer must, surely, now be as good as over because - despite the newspaper pictures of people sunbathing in Kew Gardens - down river at Kennington there's every indication that autumn is most certainly a-comin’ in…

The Horse-chestnut trees are throwing down their conkers: their knobbled shells bursting open and spilling out their fruit - briefly gleaming with an oily, chocolate-mahogany sheen all too soon dulled by the scars of conker-fights*…


The leaves, too, are beginning to turn and fall - their summer greenness draining to yellow, or spotted with palsied brown, or burnt with scarlet and indigo flames…


Meanwhile, as the autumnal-coloured crops are harvested - pumpkin, marrow, beetroot - full of the earthy fatness of the fast-fading summer, there is already a damp, musty smell hanging in the air: the sleepy scent of death and decay that heralds days of mist, frost and snow, when naked tree branches will claw and scratch at leaden skies…


* For those dwelling in other territories to whom 'conker' is an unfamilar word, all that you could want or need to know - indeed, possibly more - will be found here on Wikipedia; after reading which, if you think you might want to challenge my 'sixer' then name your date and state the stakes!

For a further hint of autumn, see my blog, Window Gazing.

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And whilst I'm rattling on about the onset of autumn, David Weeks is already ahead of us all and - with a little help from Lambeth Council - is already blogging about a seasonal holiday to come!