Autumn to Spring

1 October: Autumn is here. To be honest it's felt autumnal for a while; that orangey, rather American light, which illuminates the branches of the trees in grains of amber sunlight; that slightly crisp chill to the morning air; the sense of new starts and back to school. I sat on a wall last week for a snatched lunch break in the afternoon sun and brown leaves drifted down from the tree above, landing all around me.

October is I think the most colourful month: the warmth of summer still just about remembered in the oranges and yellows and reds of the leaves, the cosiness of November coming more sharply into focus. Halloween, Bonfire Night, house parties and family birthdays.

And after autumn will come winter. The dying months of autumn will leave the dead of winter. But my spirit will not be dead and buried. No, for there is Christmas, Sunday roasts and chilled walks, mulled wine and spiced apple juice to drink in pubs, there will be carols to sing and board games to play. And after Christmas comes my birthday, celebrated with friends in London and then with family in the French Alps a couple of weeks later.

In February comes our anniversary, this time seven years. No seven year itch for us, instead marriage, a mere four months after. February should also bring the return of my long-lost beautiful sister A1, tanned and healthy from an Australian year, sewing machine at the ready to help her somewhat stressed older yet smaller sister with all the sewing that she still hasn't done.

And then to March, that long and beastly month, with cold rains and lazy winds before yielding to April, Easter, of daffodils, of trips northwards to Yorkshire and Shropshire. Of planning, of making, of cleaning and organising. My spring cleaning next year will be a watershed: I shall neatly shake out and fold up my single self and pack it away into boxes, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, to be opened and looked at by future children and grandchildren and in times of remembrance, by myself on a future lonely night. I shall store it on the top shelf of the wardrobe that we do not yet own and instead try on for size the life labelled wife.

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