JULY - SEPTEMBER 2022

Renée Lewis

It’s already that time of year. The days are starting to get shorter as the sun is setting earlier and earlier. The mornings are getting frostier, the jumpers that were packed away to make way for summer wardrobes are coming back out. Pumpkin Spice Latte and Strictly Come Dancing season is back.

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And for the first time, I actually don’t mind.

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Up until about last year, summer had always been my default answer to that “What’s your favourite season?” ice-breaker question. I loved (and still love) nothing more than the warmth, the longer days with 9pm sunsets, sitting outside with friends or a good book, having a picnic in the park, and just basking in the sunlight. We all feel better in the summer – it's been scientifically proven that being exposed to more sunlight allows for more serotonin production in the brain, a chemical thought to regulate our mood.[1] However, now that I’m no longer in education, I’m thinking that part of my love of summer stemmed from associating it with time off school or university. And I therefore didn’t like autumn as much because I’d associated it with having to go back to school. But this summer really reminded me of that “sunshine all the time makes a desert” saying. It was unbearably hot. I don’t remember summers in London being THAT hot before, especially when commuting to work on the tube in the sticky and sweaty heat with tons of people squished into one carriage. With that 40°C heatwave, summers are only going to become much more uncomfortably hot, and I’m not looking forward to that. 

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I really welcomed the respite from the immense heat at the end of August, and now that I don’t have something like school splitting up the seasons for me anymore, it’s almost like I’ve been able to enjoy the changing seasons for what they are. Towards the start of autumn is when it’s still warm enough to not have to wear a jacket, but it’s not so hot that you feel as if you’re going to die in the heat and humidity like you almost did this summer. I’ve started noticing all of the different colours that autumn brings, all of the greens and reds and oranges and yellows and browns that signify this season, and there is nothing better than the feeling and sound of the leaves crushing beneath my shoes. Films like When Harry Met Sally, Little Women (2019) and the Harry Potter films are perfect for autumn, and best believe I’ll be whipping them out and snuggling under a blanket with my favourite snacks to watch them. The clocks may be going backwards at the end of October and sun will eventually start setting at about 4pm, but what makes it a bit more bearable is the fact that the best holidays (Halloween, Guy Fawkes and Christmas etc.) take place during these last 4 months of the year.

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Though the trees losing their leaves and the softer, waning sunlight are signs that the northern hemisphere is tilting away from the sun and that the cold winter is coming back once again, I’ve seen the beauty in knowing that after winter comes spring again.

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[1] https://theconversation.com/here-comes-the-sun-how-the-weather-affects-our-mood-19183