13 highly predictable stages of Autumn
A seasonal routine
13 reasons why I know it’s October
Every day I work to the backdrop of my preferred seasonal playlist: Vintage Jazz for Autumn. It will make you feel like you’re about to become embroiled in a meet-cute or write a book on a typewriter. There are various mentions of September/leaves/autumn and (this is how I get my kicks these days) occasional spooky songs, including undeniable jams such as The Yodeling Ghost.
By mid-October, I alternate that playlist with the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack, playing This Is Halloween and singing along with unrelenting enthusiasm until my boyfriend bans it in his presence.
I convince myself that fingerless wool gloves are a wardrobe essential and question why I don’t own any. Specifically, fingerless gloves with a fresh dark red manicure while cradling a coffee on a crisp day. The charming scene I’m picturing is almost certainly set in a park in New York, where I don’t live. There’s probably a stationery shop involved. I don’t even like my hands or nails, so I remember this and won’t buy fingerless gloves for another year.
I go through the annual routine of declaring that I cannot allow another October to pass by without going to New York in autumn, ideally around Halloween. I check flights and hotels; they’re too expensive and I don’t go. As it happens, I did once make it to NYC for Halloween and for the first time in its history, the Greenwich Village parade was cancelled because of a hurricane.
I feel a gravitational pull towards pinafore dresses with tights, A-line suede minis and Margaret Howell kilts. They feel crucial to my being able to leave the house, this is despite not even owning a kilt or a pinafore and living in jeans for 348 days a year.
In my defence, I think enthusiastic thoughts about knitwear all year long, but as soon as the trick-or-treat stuff appears in supermarkets, my brain switches into autumn mode and all I want to wear are cable knit cardigans and roll necks. My neck is too short, my face too round and my hair too long to look good in a roll neck – I do not have the delicate bone structure of a young Mia Farrow. Despite this, I own six of them. God loves a trier.
On Sunday afternoons, I check the five streaming services we subscribe to for You’ve Got Mail, then remember they keep it behind lock and key at this prime time of year, only accessible to saps like me for the princely sum of £3.99. The same happens with Practical Magic, so I watch Notting Hill again.
I retire affogato for the year because I cannot stop thinking about three specific desserts and they are: pumpkin pie, custard, rice pudding. Not together, though I wouldn’t say no. Custard must be made with fresh vanilla seeds and will ideally form a moat around a fruit-filled pie or a stodgy sponge pudding. If desperate, I will eat it cold from the tub with chopped banana. The rice pudding has to made with cream, it can’t come from a can and it should ideally be baked with a sprinkling of nutmeg on top. Pumpkin pie… well that’s a nightmare to find in England so I’ll just take whatever I can get.
I wait a few weeks and then threaten to make the pumpkin pie because it’s too hard to find a good one in the UK. This happens every year and I’ve never made one. My boyfriend threatens to do the same – he’s also never made one. We will absolutely both say we’re going to make a pumpkin pie again this year.
Every hot drink is pumpkin-spiced and I refuse to try or buy any of them. I make disparaging comments about how basic and grotesque they are while contemplating when to make my pie, using pumpkin-spiced mush from a can.
I crave hot chocolate as if I’m trying to reach my daily water consumption target. The first sip is liquid heaven, by the end I feel sick as a dog. I’ll forget and do it again the following day.
I become possessed by the desire to walk through parks to see as many vivid red and orange leaves as possible, forgetting that this is London where our native sycamores just get a bit brown and frazzled. Vermont it ain’t.
The weather obsession is off the chart. September is usually too hot and how are we supposed to wear cable knits when it’s warm enough to sunbathe? In October it rains for 31 straight days, so that becomes my new weather beef because the leaves all turn to mush before I can admire their crisp shatter underfoot. By the end of October, it’s either freezing and we’ve transitioned to winter thermals or we’re having a freak heatwave again. Either way, many comments are made that we didn’t even have an autumn this year.
Happy 1st October, friends! Do you go through the same predictable autumn rigmarole? Why are we like this?!
This is just a seasonal amuse-bouche for the start of my favourite month – I’ll be back again this week with the September edition of All Things Considered!
E x
The Lake District is gorgeous this time of year. I always get sucked into the whole fingerless glove thing; utterly pointless. The fact is it’s your fingers that get cold not the backs of your hands.
Please let me know where I can send you a few cans of Libby's solid pumpkin. It's so easy to prepare, trust me. Do you have pre-made pie crusts? Check. Ground cinnamon, ground ginger and ground cloves (just a touch of those)? Check. I add a dash or two of cardamom if I'm feeling frisky. Eggs? Check. Evaporated milk? Check. Caster sugar (as it's called in the UK)? Check. It's a must!