Life and Letters

I'm not sure what it is, but the older I get, the more I love autumn.

Everything seems so much brighter, fresher, deeper and more intense in autumn.

I love the sky in autumn. When the sky is blue, it's a much deeper, more intense blue. When it's grey, it's magnificently malevolent. The sunsets explode in many splendoured colour, soaking into the edges of the clouds, tipping buildings with jewel-esque tones.

I feel more alive in autumn.

I love those crisp days, where the sky is blue, the sun is warm on your face for the few seconds where the wind isn't slicing the end of your nose off.

I love getting up every morning and welcoming the golden autumn light into the room.

I love that every day the leaves are different. A kaleidoscopic riot of colour just waiting to be noticed.

I love the sound as I walk through the dry piles of fallen leaves. I refuse to believe that beneath each pile of leaves on the pavement is a dog turd and revert to childhood and jump and kick my way through each one.

I love conkers. I love the thunk they make as they hit the ground and the adrenaline rush of finding the freshly fallen conker before the squirrels do. I love the slight dampness of the newborn nut and the velvety softness of the spiky womb, so recently it's protector.

I love the smell of autumn in the countryside. The spicy scent of wood fires burning. Each one sending me back through time to my childhood.

I love the smell of autumn in the city too. It seems so much fresher to me, and sweeter too, as I pass the street vendors in the markets, hot fresh doughnuts here, roasted chestnuts there, mulled wine just ahead.

I love the tingling as the blood rushes back to my face and hands when I come in from the cold.

I love warming my hands on cartons of food bought from one of the many stalls in town and finding a spot on a wall somewhere to transfer the warmth inside.

I love to sit on the top deck of the bus in the twilight and watch the world go by. I love the fleeting glimpses of home life I get through curtains not-yet-closed. The night sneaks up so quickly, catching us unawares.

I love that there are places in Birmingham where you can go, and, for as long as you stay there, believe that you're not in Birmingham any more. Places where the sky, so often contained by concrete and metal, opens up around you, giving room for big thoughts and kite flying.

I love to stand at the top of Symphony Hall and look out across Birmingham. The vivid patchwork of the city giving way here and there to civilisation, with houses scattered here and there like stitches, holding the quilt together before giving way altogether to the cityscape. Cranes and concrete will not be denied.

I love that autumn makes me think of jazz. Mellow and contemplative at times, but always underneath, a barely restrained creativity, just waiting for the opportunity to break free.

Maybe it's just me, but something about the turning of the leaves ignites a spark in my brain, and before I know it, the flames of creativity are whipped up by that autumn breeze into a veritable blaze. I fizz with creativity. It flows through me with an almost imperceptable hum, reminding me that it's there. I find myself waking in the middle of the night, my brain refusing to shut down and let me sleep.

Autumn inspires change in me. I always move house in the autumn. I've changed jobs or had new ones more often than not in autumn. I decided to change myself last autumn.

More than anything, I think that autumn gives me hope. The start of a new academic year, everything afresh. The adrenaline of walking through the department doors and knowing that the new year ahead is brings new challenges.

I don't know know that I can really explain why, but something in the way that the trees, even as they die back for the winter have so much left to give. That last glorious effort - makes me feel that getting older isn't necessarily a bad thing, and that change isn't always for the worse.