August and Everything After

Yesterday was August Bank Holiday Monday, or, as it is known in my little corner of Cornwall, Newlyn Fish Festival. For those not in the know, it is a celebration of Newlyn Harbour, its fishermen and of course all things fishy. Seafood is displayed, cooked, and eaten; the harbour and fish market is open for examination, there are displays of gig racing, lugger sailing, and lifeboat rescues; jetskis churn up the harbour water, people listen to music and watch entertainers, and for one day it seems like the world has come to Newlyn. And it is always sunny. For 21 years, since the festival began, it has been a sunny, warm, beautiful bank holiday. It is as if the summer is saying, "This is what it could have been like for the past couple of months, if I'd have felt like it." It is the way it should be.

Today could not be more different. Today it is overcast, there is a real chill in the air, and as the rubbish from yesterday is painstakingly picked up from around the town and things return to normal, I decided to walk the dog and the son at Madron Carn (or Trengwainton Carn to be accurate, but no-one I know calls it that). The feeling that I had woken up in a totally different day from yesterday continued as it seemed like I had stepped into the middle of autumn. Leaves were not just falling visibly and audibly from a lone oak, they had already fallen. The tree was almost bare, only a few dried husks of leaves remain. As Frost said, "Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild, Should waste them all." And that was written about trees in October! I looked for blackberries, and saw many already well past their prime and withered away, the elderberries I hoped to find to supplement what I have already gathered were nowhere to be seen, despite my collecting elderflowers there in May. The overall feeling was not of late summer, but late autumn. This is what made me decide to start this blog. I want to experience and record all the different facets of this time of the year, my favourite time of the year. I don't want to feel, like I briefly felt today, that the best of autumn had been and gone without my noticing.

This blog is to set down my thoughts and impressions from now until it feels that winter has arrived. I want to record the physical changes that occur in this part of the world, the different ways the season is marked and celebrated by me and others, and the different ways that autumn affects me, poetically, intellectually and emotionally, and the way it has affected others in the past. More than just a record of autumn 2011, this is will be a recollection and celebration of autumn itself.

Please get involved: leave comments about how the different aspects of autumn affect you, or send me emails and I'll include you in blogs to come. I hope you enjoy my little piece of autumn, please bookmark me and come back often...