At about this time of year, every year, the twelve-year-olds who produce our radio & TV, news and current affairs shows, seem unable to resist the lure of the cheap win provided by an item about the change in the weather, as summer gives way to autumn. And when they do, they ALWAYS quote the first line of that Keats’ poem, “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.” You can tell when they haven’t read it, because they append ”Tis the’ to the front of the sentence to make it look as if they have.
We can’t knock Keats for coining the phrase in the first place, but it has started to sound like an AI-researched soundbite, as wince-inducing these days, as a sixth-former’s essay; and all for a season that no longer exists. For now, we seem to go straight from a preview/warm-up for the portals of Hell, during June-Aug, to a short traditional summer, which lasts until about mid-November, whereupon the floods, which will take us through ‘til the end of May, begin again.
The entire thirty-seven years of my life 😉 (about which more later), seem to have had their autumn term kicked off laden, heavy and swollen, in these overripe, redundant clichés, and it’s time for a change. Besides which… these are the first four lines of Keats’ To Autumn:
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
Lyrics, you’ll agree, as inconsistent, and ill-conceived, as any by Blur, or little Elton John. It was the sun in summer, conspiring with the season of summer, that made the fruit grow to the size it is. Why does time-served text like this live in permanent, immutable reverence? Maybe it’s because, in their fast-track through life, telling everyone how clever they are along the way, the twelve-year-olds who set our agenda, in their zeal to acquire qualifications, accolades, and achievements as efficiently as possible, only have time to read the headlines, or short extracts from the things they ought to know – thus amassing no more than paraphrased bullshit, which merely hints at a hinterland of wisdom that doesn’t actually exist. People like Borry Johnson, who have but lessons of complacency and acquiescence to established norms, to pass on from their pulpits.
We need to think about what the remnants of this season actually mean to us, today. How many days are even nominally autumn now? The fortnight or so, when young people return to their studies? How about this?
‘Tis (see what I did there?) the season when Northern Europeans
Are once again allowed out during the day in Greece, Spain, and Italy
But they have returned home
To go to school, in the case of children;
And, in the case of women,
To put on wool, or corduroy, mini-skirts that make that static rustling sound when they rub against their tights,
Which, in the case of men, makes them feel special.
All over
– and even, perhaps, look forward to the long nights and misery that have come round again already.
Read that out at the start of the One Show, and see what it does to the ratings. It’s probably a bit too hetero-normative for them, but you’ve got to write about what you know, innit?
So, another birthday marker has been passed. But not too bad for me, since, as I say, I was given special dispensation to stop counting in my late thirties. In the old days, as a younger man, I looked like Jesus – the early Renaissance Art version – all sexy and Italian. Well, as a result of that, I struck up a relationship with God, and in the end, She said that I didn’t have to add any more numbers, if I didn’t want to. It was nice of Her, because I didn’t really give anything in return for securing the privilege, besides turning up here and there, every now and again. I got a few other things thrown in too, like, She didn’t mind if I worked on the Sabbath; and more importantly, She didn’t mind if I didn’t work on the non-Sabbath, which was a sensitive of her, considering my aversion to offices, and all the maniacs that live in them. I was also allowed to covet my neighbour’s ass, which was handy; and, I could get pissed-up whenever I felt like it – and though She refused go into any details about turning water into wine, She did hint that it wasn’t so much a matter of turning into, as it was taking syrupy, strong, sour wine as a starting point, and making it palatable by adding water to it, and by that process, making it seem go further.
‘These are very simple lessons. Parsimony, abstinence, and moderation, are just other ways of avoiding ropey gear.’ She told me, as if to confirm the hint. ‘You should never lapse into drinking low-end brands like Heineken, Carlsberg, and other muck like that; and you should especially avoid everything that has ever been created and brewed in America, or you’ll be unlikely to live beyond your one score, and seventeen.’ She laughed her head off then, as if She’d told a really good joke. It’s hard to dislike Her, you know.
No, the only part of the bargain that I must observe, is not to tell anyone that She doesn’t exist. She needn’t worry, my gourd is swollen by a brain made plump in a late season flowering; and I am so brimm’d o’er in my clammy cell, that there is no room for disloyal thoughts.
Dickie White's Diary 