ISOLATION DIARIES PART 53: SEASONS

It feels as though the year is turning. Perhaps that's a strange thing to say in August, as the school holidays draw on and the cricket hums in the background. But there are signs.

I've said this before, certainly: back in the old days it always felt as though the fulcrum of the year was the camp at the end of July. It neatly split the year into two halves, and when we came back from it, collapsing in tiredness after unpacking the tents, everything definitely felt like late summer. Autumn was in the air, and the new school term was beckoning.

There's no camp these days. We have to navigate our way past the fulcrum without that lovely delineator. And that means typically at some point in August, we look up, and realise what's happening.

And what's happening is that the trees are changing colour.

Already.

I noticed it in the park yesterday. As the sun threw lovely long shadows beneath the oaks and elms, I saw gold shimmering through their translucent leaves. I glimpsed a hint of red too, as the wind rushed through a canopy, and a silvery flutter against the bright blue sky. There's no doubt: the trees are getting ready for autumn.

The grass too. The recent heatwaves have turned the grass a whitish-brown, a dry and crispy carpet to catch the leaves. In fact last week's storms have already hurried that process along.

So strange as it is, it really does feel like the second half of the year. It's darker earlier - sometimes through clouds, but not always, and there's occasionally a shudder in a gust of wind, just enough to remind you that your coat is still hanging up in the hall without you, and that you might need it again soon.

I don't mind. Autumn is my favourite season. And this happens every year doesn't it?

But not quite like this. This year, 2020, isn't like every other year. This year, we've rolled through the seasons in different phases of a lockdown, during the first global pandemic. And I think I, like a lot of people, had hoped it would have disappeared by now and that life could be back to normal.

"Half-way through," I remember saying to my Mum, positively, on the phone. It would have been about seven weeks in. Even then, I expected normality by the summer. So much for normality. Maybe we all felt like that. 

The same turning trees were young and green back then. I wore my winter coat to the park and felt the early spring sunshine. The bare branches were just sprouting into flower, and there was blossom falling on the fresh grass. I don't know if I could have imagined I'd still be wandering out there in autumn.

And maybe there'll be more? There are bound to be freezing November days out there, and perhaps even crunchy snow. Those trees will look very different, poking out of the thick white snow, icing weighing down their heavy branches. Christmas might come and go, and lead us full circle to spring again?

Well. There's a certain joy in watching the seasons change like this. For now though, it's late summer all of a sudden, and delightfully, pensively, startlingly, autumn is coming.