{"id":9781,"date":"2023-10-09T18:10:34","date_gmt":"2023-10-09T18:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=9781"},"modified":"2023-10-13T10:41:50","modified_gmt":"2023-10-13T10:41:50","slug":"red-and-yellow-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=9781","title":{"rendered":"Red and Yellow Blues"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Autumn colours\/Andrew Rees\/flickr<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By my totally unscientific reckoning (imagine a process akin to the DfE\u2019s calculations of the number of school pupils in England), there is an almost infinite number of ways of bisecting the population: cat people v. dog people, introverts v. extroverts, etc. I would have added people who find autumn bracing v. people who find it melancholy to this list, except it\u2019s occurred to me that there are vast tracts of the planet who do not experience autumn as we do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m with those who find it melancholy, and I found this sentiment reflected beautifully in an article by Hannah Rose Woods (erstwhile University Challenge <\/em>captain with an exquisitely arched eyebrow) in the New Statesman. In it she explores the concept of \u2019air ache\u2019<\/a>, the sense of a changing atmosphere, that 17th century scientists like Boyle and Bacon attempted to analyse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘La Rentr\u00e9e’ is a big thing in France. It\u2019s more than just back to school, given their habit of all going on holiday in August (the minority July separatists have their own name : ‘Juilletistes’). Preparing yourself for the return to the chalkface or the coalface is vital, and who can deny how invigorating new stationery can be? I\u2019m sure I used to find autumn bracing when it did indeed mean back to school \u2013 and back to my fellow dames and all the fun and laughter they represented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But when the parks and streets are aflame with colour, the feeling of the dying of the light is inescapable. For a parent, it\u2019s the season when you are abandoned. You go from knowing everything about your child\u2019s day \u2013 their meals, their play, their bowel movements \u2013 to virtually nothing, as they remain tight-lipped about what they did and who they saw. If you\u2019re lucky tantalising snippets about best friends and playground gossip may seep out gradually. And when they leave home for university or work\u2026 well, best not to dwell on how much you are no longer needed but to enjoy the new-found freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet\u2026 the colder nights make you want to draw them back into the fold, ply them with hot food, and step up the propaganda for vests<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The challenge of being properly dressed for the season adds to its discomforts. If, like me, you\u2019re reluctant to break out the heavy-duty woollies until it\u2019s really cold (\u2018you won\u2019t feel the benefit else\u2019), you\u2019re doomed to spend a lot of time shivering. Glorious sunny mornings are a deception, you realise as you\u2019re half way to the station in ridiculously optimistic clothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then there\u2019s the mission creep of Christmas! It\u2019s still three weeks to Halloween, and yet the decorations are up in the West End (if not actually turned on), and Boots appears to have showered anyone who ever walked past one of their branches with festive coupons. Don\u2019t marketeers realise how panic-inducing this is \u2013 and in a way that makes you want to hide under the duvet rather than go and spend?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bring on winter itself, so you can go equipped with woolly tights and quilted coat, and finally get serious about Christmas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You want to ply them with hot food and step up the propaganda for vests…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9788,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,419,55,60],"tags":[537,538],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9781"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9781"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9798,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9781\/revisions\/9798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}