Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out, Summer

Do you know what I like about September? Well, there's all the obvious, like crisp, bright days and clear blue skies. There's the heavy silence of the early morning and the dew scattered grass. That delicious pause before autumn really takes hold but you can smell it in the air. All that. But, also, I love it because it allows me to give up on summer.

I'm British. Which means I spend the first half of the year yearning for the sun on my face and hoping for temperatures in the high twenties. Then June arrived, and I started thinking about barbecues and paddling pools and bedding plants. It rained. Or was unseasonably cold. I sulked. But, hey! There's still July! July won't let us down! So I bought a sun lounger and insisted on force feeding everyone salad and burgers done on the grill. Because it was still raining. In fact, it was not so much 'rain' as a monsoon. Drains were overflowing. Areas were flooded. But it's July! So I made the kids wear shorts while putting the heating on. August won't let us down! We clung to hope like rats to a sinking ship. And that's what was happening. Our summer was sinking. The drought we were all warned about at the beginning of the year with scaremongering headlines about stand pipes had turned in to the wettest summer since records began. To add insult to injury, just when we thought about giving up hope, the weather gods would chuck us a few warm, dry days. Then as soon as you started to relax in to it and bought sun cream, the heavens would once again open.

It was depressing. It was a total washout. It meant that my summer wardrobe barely saw daylight and I was wearing a jumper and slippers when I should have been moaning about the heat. Because of course if it had been hot, we'd have all bitched and moaned about melting, and the lack of air conditioning, and how it wasn't fair. We're terribly fickle like that.

But now it's September. Summer's leaky ship has sailed. Sod you, summer. Now we will look forward to Bonfire Night and Christmas. Maybe Halloween, if you're so inclined. But from now on, it can rain. And be cold. Hell, it can even snow. Snow! We quite like snow. It causes the same kind of disruption as the rain, but it just looks so pretty we don't really care. Unless it stays for more than two days. Then it gets dirty looking and icy and it can nob off. Let it always be said that the Great British Public are fickle.

But, yeah. September can hang around for a bit. It marks the end of summer hopes and the beginning of the slide in to winter darkness. And as the kids are all back at school, my walks with the dog are wonderfully peaceful. Me and September are friends.