PRELUDE TO A PECULIAR AUTUMN

It feels like change is in the air - big, uncomfortable, stormy change, and I’m not exactly sure I like it.

The thing is, whether I like it or not, season change is sometimes inevitable, and you just have to roll with it, don’t you? It’s like an electrical storm - you can’t stop the clouds turning violet or the wind picking up, but you can batten down the hatches.

I think it’s interesting to think about why change can be so hard. I’ve reached the opinion that it’s because as we get older and live through some stuff, different things get attached to us, and then big old change comes along - sometimes quickly - and threatens to rip those things away, and it’s all outside of our control. As the tidal wave rolls in, you have to decide which bit of the boat to hold on to, and then there are just big questions as it hits: where will I end up? What will I lose? What will the ocean be like on the other side of this?

Now I don’t know anything for sure; I’ve not got inside intel to a work thing or a health thing or a family thing. And I’m expressing a feeling rather than a clue today. I really know nothing - other than that late August feeling, that anticipation of something autumnal in the air. In fact, it might be once again, that ridiculous old biological clock telling me I’ve still got a year of uni left, and that I ought to be heading back to Bath. Ridiculous because it’s nearly 25 years on. But then the same brain still thinks it can run a hundred metres in 13 seconds and vault a three-foot fence. You can’t really rely on just the rusty old brain for accuracy.

Nevertheless, things change. And actually, it can be obvious that they need to, even though the turbulence ahead looks rough. Faced with the truth of it, nobody wants to stagnate in the doldrums forever - there there are no waves at all, let alone a tsunami; the air is stale, and the windless sea as flat as a mirror. Sailors say it’s the most dangerous ocean of all. No, we all need change; we all need a storm every now and again to shake things up.

And I think that’s where I’m at. I need shaking up. It’s not my favourite prayer. If there were other ways to embrace change, without being thrown about in a tiny boat, I’d choose them - but I suppose I understand that my need for change is greater than my need for comfort. So, as the feeling grows and the summer fades into a peculiar autumn, I’d better at least whisper it. Help me change well, God, if change is on the way.