71410201 Autumn

‘It is very nice, this nice weather we’re having,’ Sedartis agrees, ‘but it is also a burden.’

‘How is it a burden?’ I ask, although I feel I know the answer already.

‘It is also a burden because it insists on our enjoyment of it. If it were raining, or grey and drizzly, or at the very least cloudy and disagreeably damp, we would both be happiest sitting indoors and doing some work on the computer or listening to some music or having a nap or watching a documentary we had recorded several months ago and never got around to catch up with or play the guitar and badly sing an old song. We would be immensely, deeply content doing so and in the process get some of the things done we’d been meaning to do for a while. Instead, we have to sit outside and enjoy the sunshine. Or go for a walk. We go for long walks anyway, we know there is nothing wrong with long walks, quite the opposite, we love our long walks in any weather, but with this very nice sunshine comes a faint sense of obligation. It would be a terrible waste of a beautiful day to be locked inside and not be happy, but the effort of being happy can be too much. Sometimes it is really more pleasant to just be moderately gruntled and steep in the comfortable, undemanding moistness of misery that comes with being English in England. The stridency of happiness is unbecoming to us and thus also a bit of a burden.’

I know he’s right though I will him to be wrong and I close my eyes and inhale the neither warm nor cold air. The city is in constant, fuel-driven agitation: cars and lorries and aeroplanes and buses and ambulances. Always, always the ambulances.

I like the sun on my skin and the heat that expands under my cheekbones. I enjoy enjoying the weather, burdensome as it may be…

A big fat cloud starts wandering across the sun and immediately the air feels a little cooler, though not quite yet chilly. I open my eyes and see: it will pass.

I like autumn, though it signify decay. This year, I’ve chosen to stay in London rather than go away. I like London, I love London. It troubles me, right at the moment, as there is too much cold money flowing in that doesn’t do anything other than stifle the cracks that before let the light shine through, and it threatens to deaden the life that makes London unruly, infuriating, adorable, quirky, insane, but still I love it, because I know this siege, too, will be withstood; like the small feeble cloud across my sun this very minute, it will pass, and ere long. I have an old-fashioned, daily rejuvenated love affair with ten million people, with more history than I know to make sense of and a generous, rebellious, untameable heart.

I sense there is a change in the air and I know the change will need to be profound.

Sedartis nods in agreement and some slight tingle of anticipation; I close my eyes again and take it all in while it lasts…