Season of Suicides and Leaves on the Line

There’s no question that Autumn has arrived in the UK.  It’s dark now when I leave the house in the morning, and dark when I arrive home in the evening.  The heating is on, the duvet is back on the bed, I’ve dug out the long waterproof coat, and I’ve started wearing tights with my work skirts.

Transportation problems also seem to increase at this time of year.  Leaf fall and excessive rain make tracks slippery and cause delayed trains.  Signalling problems seem more abundant when the weather is bad.  And people are more likely to throw themselves under trains.

The most common reason for delayed commuter trains is someone being hit by one.  I know that I should feel sorry for the poor sods who feel the need to end it all under a packed commuter train, but it happens far too often, and inconveniences far too many people, for me to empathise much these days.  I do feel sorry for the poor train drivers, however.  If you’re driving the train that reduces a human being to goo on the tracks, even if they deliberately put themselves there, you’re not likely to forget it.

This morning I had a particularly troublesome journey into work.  There are two lines from our local station, into two different London stations.  One line was running no trains due to a fatality further down the line, the other was running delayed trains because of engineering works over-running from the weekend.  But the advantage of the London suburbs is there is always another route.  I walked to another station and took the Thameslink train, which is another route altogether.  That was actually not a bad journey – 35 minutes on the train, and I was able to get off at a station that was only a 15-minute walk from the office.  If it wasn’t for the 30-minute walk from home to the station where I have to get this train, it might be a viable option for my daily commute.

But, I did get to work in the end, and thankfully all the train problems seemed to have been sorted by the time I made my journey home.

Despite my dislike of Autumn and Winter, I was an Autumn baby – my birthday is later this week.   I have been told that I was born in the early hours of the morning, during a horrendous thunderstorm.  You’d think that would make me more amenable to Autumn weather, but no.

When I was a kid I quite liked having an October birthday.  My birthday always fell during half term week, which meant I never had to go to school on my birthday and I could have my party on the actual day.  Kids’ birthday parties are always during the day, so the short days never meant much then.

As an adult, though, it’s a different story.  It’s often difficult to find people to celebrate with on the day because it’s usually cold and windy and pissing down with rain and people are less inclined to go out.  Or they are sick, since this time of year is the start of the winter flu season.  One year I was sick myself on my birthday.  Determined to drag myself in to work because I didn’t want to spend my birthday sick, I felt so dreadful I ended up going home early, and spent the rest of the day alone on the sofa feeling rubbish.

But we can’t do anything about changing our date of birth.  Only the Queen gets to have an ‘officlal’ birthday, at an agreeable time of the year, as well as her actual one.  So I will be venturing out on Thursday, whatever the weather (and according to the forecast it’s likely to be pissing down with rain) to celebrate the anniversary of my entry into the world.  As long as there is wine at the restaurant – and somebody there to help me drink it – I shall have a good time regardless.

I’m still counting the days until summer, though.