Summer Timetable Comes into Effect

This weblog (which recently clocked up its Twelve Millionth visit and its 117,894th comment) is now going on to its summer timetable. I shall be posting much less often, and for some of the time the only thing posted will be my Mail on Sunday column.

 

I have in the past tried to treat this time of year as if it were just like any other, but it is not. This is not just because politicians disappear from view, as they have very little impact on life. It is because a sort of subliminal signal seems to go through the world, like the shiver of spring that wakes up all the toads, as noted by George Orwell in his delightful essay on those enjoyable reptiles (sorry, I should have said 'amphibians').

 

But, rather than waking everyone up, August makes them long to be away from cities and streets, and to wish to set aside normal concerns for a few weeks. Maybe it’s an ancient impulse to get the harvest in before the autumn winds and rain.  

 

People who get up late miss the best part of this odd, restless, faintly disturbing month  – the beautiful combination of coolness and clear light that you get almost every day in the early morning, the effect enhanced by the darker green of the leaves.  

 

It’s a warning, really. Autumn is beginning to patrol the edges of the day. However hot it may be at noon, the planet is tilting towards winter, and next Christmas is already a lot closer than last Christmas.  Early risers also notice (perhaps this is why it is mainly funky metropolitan slug-abed types, who have breakfast at 11.00 a.m.,  who want to push the clocks forward to Berlin time) that the days are already shortening quite fast.

 

Anyway, that’s my excuse. This is no time to be hunched at a keyboard, peering at figures or searching for quotations.  You’ll hear from me occasionally, but I look forward to a renewed, refreshed more vigorous conversation some time round about the beginning of September.