It's That Time Again
Aug. 30th, 2020 08:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinIn popular culture, the August Bank Holiday is the last hurrah of summer – barbecued sausages, sun on golden hills, children having a last burst of freedom before heading back to school, The Proms on Radio 3.
In reality – at least, in my experience here – you can set your clock by the return of autumn weather just in time to ruin the long weekend. My first summer here, I went to Wales, got a cold on the train between Cardiff and Swansea, and spent the rest of the weekend alternately guzzling ginger tea and throwing myself at the Preseli Hills in defiance (and, having just moved from LA, celebration) of the cold damp wind. Of my six years here, only one August Bank Holiday has been fine, and I remember it mainly for the astonishment that it was so.
The same has happened this year. Friday night saw a blustery, drenching rainstorm, behind which followed a cold damp atmosphere sucked down from Norway. We went from balmy mid-20s to a high of 14°C in one day. Today is sunny again, but cool enough to feel like a warm morning in autumn rather than a cool morning in summer. Happy Bank Holiday Weekend, everybody.
And I have been slammed with a deep desire for Canada. I had been puzzling over why it should be so especially strong all of a sudden, but this morning I remembered that exactly the same thing happens every September, thanks to my habitual pilgrimage back for Canadian Thanksgiving at the start of October every year I was living in LA. The summer starts fading into autumn and I know Canada Time is coming. It may be especially strong this year on account of the extremely Vancouvery weather on Friday, coming hard on the heels of reconnecting with a good friend there and making tentative plans for next summer. In the current circumstances, my annual instincts to stock up for the winter are getting more vindication than usual, and a fantasy of having a house with a large enough garden to fend off starvation has been simmering in the background. I would grow Hubbard squash, enough tomatoes to bottle for a winter's worth of curries, and waxy potatoes. And I wouldn't have to worry quite so much about my society losing its head when the trappings of civilisation draw away, because they've only been the status quo for a couple of generations. Naturally that is exerting a strong pull on me this year especially.
Anyway, I've got another winter here at least, and am in a good place to see it through, both physically and mentally. The second wave that is cresting in Europe will crash on our shores sooner or later; I just have to finish my stock-up before then and will ride it out in splendid isolation. Three more trips to Cambridge for lentils and maple syrup should do it. In a week or so, it will be time to bring in as many blackberries as I can. The ancestral memory of 300 years of subsistence farming will be appeased. It is an odd thing that, in Europe, I am operating as if the New World is the Old Country, but we play the hand we're dealt, and mine is all maple leaves.
In reality – at least, in my experience here – you can set your clock by the return of autumn weather just in time to ruin the long weekend. My first summer here, I went to Wales, got a cold on the train between Cardiff and Swansea, and spent the rest of the weekend alternately guzzling ginger tea and throwing myself at the Preseli Hills in defiance (and, having just moved from LA, celebration) of the cold damp wind. Of my six years here, only one August Bank Holiday has been fine, and I remember it mainly for the astonishment that it was so.
The same has happened this year. Friday night saw a blustery, drenching rainstorm, behind which followed a cold damp atmosphere sucked down from Norway. We went from balmy mid-20s to a high of 14°C in one day. Today is sunny again, but cool enough to feel like a warm morning in autumn rather than a cool morning in summer. Happy Bank Holiday Weekend, everybody.
And I have been slammed with a deep desire for Canada. I had been puzzling over why it should be so especially strong all of a sudden, but this morning I remembered that exactly the same thing happens every September, thanks to my habitual pilgrimage back for Canadian Thanksgiving at the start of October every year I was living in LA. The summer starts fading into autumn and I know Canada Time is coming. It may be especially strong this year on account of the extremely Vancouvery weather on Friday, coming hard on the heels of reconnecting with a good friend there and making tentative plans for next summer. In the current circumstances, my annual instincts to stock up for the winter are getting more vindication than usual, and a fantasy of having a house with a large enough garden to fend off starvation has been simmering in the background. I would grow Hubbard squash, enough tomatoes to bottle for a winter's worth of curries, and waxy potatoes. And I wouldn't have to worry quite so much about my society losing its head when the trappings of civilisation draw away, because they've only been the status quo for a couple of generations. Naturally that is exerting a strong pull on me this year especially.
Anyway, I've got another winter here at least, and am in a good place to see it through, both physically and mentally. The second wave that is cresting in Europe will crash on our shores sooner or later; I just have to finish my stock-up before then and will ride it out in splendid isolation. Three more trips to Cambridge for lentils and maple syrup should do it. In a week or so, it will be time to bring in as many blackberries as I can. The ancestral memory of 300 years of subsistence farming will be appeased. It is an odd thing that, in Europe, I am operating as if the New World is the Old Country, but we play the hand we're dealt, and mine is all maple leaves.
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Date: 2020-09-11 10:45 am (UTC)Absolutely :) And beautifully said.