One of the real joys of winter: hot soup on a cold evening!

So, it has happened, and we have to get on with it . . . winter, at least in terms of darkness if not weather, is upon us – with journeys to work now requiring full headlights; torches with dead batteries having to be replenished; and a little bit of a chill returning to the early mornings even though we haven’t really got any harshness from November just yet.

In a strange kind of way, when the time changes and the acceptance grows that our ‘longer days’ are just memories, there can be a certain calmness about winter. After all, if you doze off on the couch at around 8pm, there’s no feeling of guilt that you should be outside, involved in some kind of gainful work or exercise in the great outdoors.

For some reason, I’ve always found the transition period of September and October to be that trifle more mournful, maybe because we realise that another summer has passed and that our brighter days are gone for another season.  For those of us on this side of the great Atlantic Pond, that will always be autumn, but the Americans always refer to it as The Fall.

The origins of that latter title, though, are apparently not of American creation. The use of ‘The Fall’ term for those later transition months of the year can be traced back to the 1600s and 1500s and is, in all probability, linked to the departure of the leaves from the trees through September and October, another great irritant as we try to keep paths and driveways reasonably tidy.

I could be ‘on the side’ of the many great poets who were always touched by the beauty of Autumn, like John Keats, who wrote so beautifully about the ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ being the ‘close bosom friend of the maturing sun’ but as the light declines and the suns slips lower into the sky, I find it a more difficult time than normal to keep up the spirits.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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