Winter on the way
Aug 30th, 2007 by heidi
The last week has been remarkably nice for this, a summer expected to go on record as the rainiest in history for England and Wales since records began in 1766. We’ve had sunny days, despite relatively cool temperatures, and I suppose the best indication of how rain-free it has been is that I’m caught up on my laundry for the first time in a couple of months!
Change is in the air. There were rainshowers last night; I lay awake in bed while Graham settled Ciaran back in his bed after a 4.30am waking and listened to the drops hitting the window. This morning as I walked into work I could feel a slight mist on my face but nothing more than a suggestion of moisture, despite what were and still are ominous-looking clouds overhead. You could be forgiven for thinking that it might just as well be early spring but the difference is in the way the wind feels as it brushes my cheek. In spring, there’s an undertone of cold as winter lets go. You feel the warmth as an afterthought, really, to what is still a lingering chill.
Today, though, the wind feels warm but is accompanied by a little scratch of cold. Even though you can feel the remnants of summer’s heat in the ambient temperature, you know that it’s not going to stay, that its time is passing rapidly and autumn is a dread reality. Autumn with its ever-lengthening nights that seem to stretch interminably until Christmas lights and decoration start popping up to brighten them.
The real trouble with a Manchester autumn, though, is that England generally doesn’t get anything like the fall colours that New England sees and where we live, so close to the city centre, there is next to none. The leaves of what trees and shrubs we do see will turn brown and drop: sad reminders that ours is an urban life rather than a country one, and an urban life in a city where the councillors are generally more interested in building new “luxury” apartments than any sort of public green space.
I don’t like autumn and winter in Manchester. There are other places in the UK where those two seasons can still be pleasant, but our little metropolis is not one of them. Here there are still lots of green leaves but they’re turning brown at the edges; my poor balcony garden is shrivelling up as all the beautiful flowers of spring and early summer die back. Soon even the greenest leaves will fall and I can’t bear the indeterminate shades of brown and grey, blending almost seamlessly into the sullenly cloudy sky, that will soon take hold until spring finally breaks through.
About the only thing I like about a Manchester autumn is that damp, warm breeze with its clear, cold tang that makes me dream of far away places and mountains covered in pure sheets of snow.
