Returning to Autumn

Well, I'm back in London - I was supposed to go to Lisbon with Christian last Saturday, but, regrettably, I came back home that day instead.  I'm very sad about how the holiday ended, and I wish things had turned out differently, but I think that it wouldn't be appropriate to say anything more here.

So, yes, I've been in town for a week and yet I haven't really blogged - in part because I didn't know what to say about this whole mess and in part because work was so thrilled to have me back early that I've been swamped.

Somehow I feel like I've come back to a town where nothing has changed since I was gone and yet, in some ways, it's a completely different city.  After the coldest August in seventeen years, temperatures in the high teens (that's upper 60s in Fahrenheit) are just what we're used to at this point.  Most London women never packed away their opaque tights when summer started, and coats have been making frequent appearances on the streets for the past few months.  But, at the same time, it is unmistakably autumn.

I would send you a bouquet

of newly sharpened pencils

if I knew your name and address.

-You've Got Mail 

The sun is rising later and setting earlier every day.  I find myself stepping around waves of children on their way to school in the mornings.  Store windows are chock full of long sleeves and wool.  It doesn't seem unreasonable to crave soup for lunch and casseroles for dinner.  My theatre's 2011/2012 programme has opened.  And - the clincher - the annual Thames Festival is this weekend.  I'm unhappy that I didn't really have a proper summer holiday, but it is so lovely to come back to all of this.  New seasons are so restorative, aren't they?

sunrise over the Home Counties, October 2010

I have written a post about my week in Berlin, which I will publish soon, and we do still have two more guest bloggers to enjoy.  I'll sprinkle these amongst the normal posts in the next week or so - I'm very much looking forward to getting back to our normal blogging schedule and to catching up on everything that you've been writing!

Have a wonderful weekend, dear readers, and, especially on this anniversary, please join me in celebrating everything that we live for and that so many have died for.