Dirt, death, decay and old fingernails

I want to talk to you today about spring cleaning ...

Isn't this rather the wrong time of year?

Not at all.

But shouldn't you wait until spring to talk about spring cleaning ?

That is so typical of your lack of advance thinking! It's what's wrong with the country today. Why wait till the last moment? Do you wait till summer to discuss your summer holidays? Do you start thinking about winter sports in January? Is Christmas Eve when you get down to Christmas planning? Is the age of 65 the time to start planning a pension ...?

OK, OK, you've made your point, albeit, if I may say so, in a particularly heavy-handed way. So why do you want to talk about spring cleaning now ?

Because autumn is, in many ways, the mirror image of spring. Both are periods of change and transition. Both are not so much seasons in their own right as looking forward to the next season. Winter and summer are solid states of mind, but spring and autumn are curtain-raisers, preludes, periods of anticipation or regret, times when we....

Yes, yes, get on with it!

In spring we have April showers. In autumn we have the same sort of blustery, showery, changeable weather. In fact, we have been having it for the last few days.

True. April showers in October. Every year ....

The leaves have started to tumble, making a mess everywhere. The October winds have blown down twigs, branches, bricks, slates, making even more of a mess everywhere.

Yes, it's true. We retreat indoors, leaving the playthings of summer on the lawn of life. Garden seats stay out in the rain, old cricket bats lie forgotten under the bushes, a football lies deflated under the rhododendron ....

Gosh, we are poetic this morning! And what are we driving at, may I ask?

You can't see?

No. Can you?

Only this. That in springtime we clean, and we call it spring cleaning, and we have showers and we call them April showers. But in autumn we have the same showers and we have no name for them, and we have the opposite of spring cleaning, but we do not have a name for the process of getting the place in a mess !

You're saying that all the things we have to clean up in springtime are deposited in the autumn?

Partly that. But the crucial thing is that we don't give it a name! We don't call it "autumn dirtying"! We don't call them October showers! We ignore autumn and its true meaning. We avert our eyes from the implications of a dying season.

No, we don't. We admire the autumn tints, and the beautiful leaves. In the USA, in Vermont, it is a whole industry. People flock to Vermont to see it. People in England go to arboretums in the autumn. We are very conscious of autumn !

On the contrary, it is another chance to fool ourselves. The only reason that the leaves change colour is that they are dying. You may call them autumn tints but they are death pangs to me, the last choking colour changes of leaves on their death bed - the leaves are sending out desperate farewell signals, and we stand there and say, "How nice !" We are averting our eyes again from reality. It's hypocrisy on a big scale!

It's wrong to admire the autumn leaves ?

It's wrong to think they're a symbol of beauty. They're not! They're a symbol of decay! Autumn is all about decay and dirt and decline and blackberries shrivelled on the bough because nobody has picked them, and about dead-heading, and dismal dankness

And harvest time?

Don't give me the old Keatsian rubbish! "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" indeed! Season of mud and yellow rotting potato stalks, more like!

So you don't like autumn?

Hate it. Give me spring any time. Autumn is the time when nature throws out her rubbish, discards her old fingernails and dirty underwear, and we all stand there and look at the process and say, "How Very Very Lovely"!

Feeling better now you've got all that off your chest ?

Yes, thanks.

Good. Incidentally, why did you bring up the subject of spring cleaning?

It gives me something to look forward to.

Thank you.

Not at all.

This feature has been paid for by the Enemies of Autumn.