Rainy days and Sundays always cheer me up

[Twit 2]

Yeah I know it's Saturday, but that don't scan.

Ah, the change of seasons. Autumn, the big brown bastard—and he's right in your face. I've turned on the central heating, you'll be interested to know. My time approaches. I love being "a sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot." Rain's on the panes and I've got a black coffee and a vape on the go. In a bit, I'm going out in that same rain to mooch about in empty fields with washed-out synths in my headphones, so I can feel the benefit of the warm bath on my return. Tomorrow there'll be roast chicken with all the trimmin's. Yes, it's autumn and there's nothing you can do about it.

What are your favourite autumn and rainy things? Ever seen a leaf? Tell me about it.

[TrenterPercenter]

Love an autumn, but then I love a spring, a summer and a winter, I don't like to discriminate and take each season for the wonder it brings.  We really are blessed in the UK at how distinct our seasons are.

But yes autumn, love a bit of rain with a cozy brew on the go; I've bought some logs for the fire (I know it's bad but it is an occasional treat), love nice walk in the park with mi Julie; just brought my chilli plants in and will give the grass one more haircut when it's dry enough and then that's it till spring.  Love how the dark starts clambering in after 7 and that calming stillness comes about; then the lights and bustle of the dark city ignites.  Fantastic.

[Neomod]

One of my favourite autumnal things was to walk around Regents Park at Magic Hour with a bit of Baroque in my headphones.

Lovely stuff.

[Buelligan]

Not autumn here yet, sunny and warm, flowers in flower, stone still pushing back sunlight into bare feet.  But autumn things I love here are when the vinyards lapping the hills change. Each cepage, covering one small plot, its own colour.  Purple, scarlet, lemon, flame, plum, gold and ochre.  Something beautiful, silent.  The air edged with the ghost of cold coming south, maybe woodsmoke.  It might rain, ceps push up, smooth and clean to be sliced and fried.  And chestnuts fall, they are roasted.  The river fills again, perhaps and the last figs, tiny, black and sweet hang waiting.

[Twit 2]

Strange that you should come
like that, without any form at all,
carrying no symbolic implements,
without smile or frown
or any commotion,
as if you had been there all the time,
like a pair of gloves left in a pocket.

As if I had been looking that way,
into the wide blue yonder, and you were
beside me, enduring my hard luck stories
with infinite patience. Not even waiting –
the tree outside my window
doesn't wait, nor the ocean-wedge
with its new, precise horizon – just there
like the shadow of a church

or a quiet brother.
And how I saw you, in the mess of things,
was as a slant of grey,
the perfect grey of house dust,
an absolute neutral, with no weaving,
no shimmer of cobalt
and light-years away from Byzantium.

Grey. And I want to add, like light,
as if a skylight opened in my skull,
and into the darkness fell
a diagonal of pure Bodmin Moor.
But even that's too bright,
too world-we're-busy-in.
Call it 'dust' then, or the bloom
of leaf-smoke from an autumn fire.

[bgmnts]

Autumn is the only season where I feel close to right. Pissing down, dark, everyone else is a bit miserable, no pressure to go outside, sprouts come into season etc.

Woke up this morning at 7.45am warm and comfy as fuck under the covers to the sound of torrential rain lashing against the window. Close to perfection. Why people love sun more than rain I do not know but rain is the best.

How sad, how triste...

[Midas]

picked up a conker and a nearby bush started rustling to the tune of Gnossienne No. 4

[pigamus]

I'm sure we all agree that people who post poems without saying who wrote them are lower than paedophiles.

[ImmaculateClump]

I like the wind the best. When you're being blown about and pushed around. I can't stop smiling when I'm out in the wind, and all the trees are waving at you and dancing and it feel like the whole world is alive.
Best thing is when it's on your side and blowing in the right direction and pushing you along on your walk and you sometimes feel like you're about to take off!

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

It's all about the coziness for me. A brisk Autumn walk is a fine thing (although the hell with trudging through cold rain and mud) but it must be followed up with a return home for some nice warming soup, roast dinner or the like. I put the duvet back on my bed for the first time in months and it's been bloody lovely.

One of these days, I would like to visit that New England they have now and see the famously picturesque Autumns they have there. The ones round here in England Classic do tend to look a bit drab in comparison.

[checkoutgirl]

it's autumn

Is it? I still have the electric fan in my room and the central heating has not even been considered yet. I'm boiling.

[kngen]

Yep, nothing better than lying in bed listening to the rain. Sends me off to sleep better than a fistful of valium.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

The occasional still autumn nights you get, walking home observing the large orange leaves bathed in amber streetlight from under. Among my favourites. A sense of calm amidst change.

Continual rain, not so much, but showers, yes, fine.

It drives you inside. Libraries saturated with dulling woozy striplights, the huddle and tangle of a crowded pub (before Covid at least), cinemas, meeting rooms. Plans. It always seems to be a season of plans, the diary is chockablock.

Fewer wasps and fruit flies, but more squirrels, foxes, hedgehogs, badgers and birds. Also busy preparing their plans.

Steaming kitchen windows, wet footwear, food smells, damp dogs.

Things seem to gain pace overall towards Christmas, racing and racing forwards towards the bleakness.

[Mrs Wogans lemon drizzle]

All new episodes of Catchphrase. 

[Ferris]

the big brown bastard

Twit 2 #canceled.

Love a bit of autumn. Sunglasses and puffa puffa jacket aka my two favourite items of clothing, in one season?! Sign me up!

[Twit 2]

I'm sure we all agree that people who post poems without saying who wrote them are lower than paedophiles.

Sorry.

[Kankurette]

It's pissing it down. I'm not a fan. Although I do like conkers.

[Jittlebags]

What about pissing conkers?

[Chedney Honks]

Absolutely cunted with the vid, listening to the rain hammering on the skylight, heating on for the first time of the year, watching some 80s HK comedy, drinking hot Lucozade in bed. Vibing.

[Johnny Foreigner]

I really like drizzle and fog combined; my favourite month is probably November. Strolling along the countryside in my woollen coat and shawl, on a misty, clammy November eve, the first hints of winter upon me, is a delight. I look forward to once again walking home from the office for two hours, with nothing but fog and The Archers for company.

[Bernice]

My thirtieth autumn and it never fails to amaze me that it never fails to amaze me. You'd think by now I'd have got used to it, the changing seasons. But every time it hits like a rediscovered tune from childhood, something mum had on cassette in the car, something that lasted a whole school year of pick-ups and drop-offs until it went missing under the driver's seat. Maybe that's why I never get used to it: every time it comes around it's gained a new harmony, one more October shifting the tone of the mean ever so slightly.

Autumn's the most powerful, or maybe Spring. Winter and Summer come on cautious, by degrees. I'm always second guessing them. Autumn, though — there it is.

[Glebe]

[tag]New Travis song.[/tag]

[Gurke and Hare]

Rain's fucking shit. "Ooh, I don't want to go out so it's good that nobody else can either." Bollocks to that.

[Johnny Foreigner]

Ah, but there's me brolly. Me brolly is me most trusted companion. For it both sheltereth me and succoureth my bones when weariness of the muscle doth plague me.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

[tag]New Travis song.[/tag]

Speaking of songs, does anyone else change their listening habits with the seasons? Trip Hop and Doom Metal seem to suit this time of year.

[Smeraldina Rima]

Speaking of songs, does anyone else change their listening habits with the seasons? Trip Hop and Doom Metal seem to suit this time of year.

Neomod's post about walking in the park and listening to baroque music reminds me of a post from the past that mentioned walking and listening to "Sheep May Safely Graze" by Bach in autumn, which may have been made by Neomod, or holyzombiejesus. Pretty sure that it was Grassbath who mentioned their autumn being a Red House Painters season. Now I always think of listening to Bach and Kozelek in autumn. Of a million things that The Boston Crab's posts have got me into, one was Bill Evans. For a few years now, I listen to the Bill Evans albums from beginning to end from autumn to winter. The same with Bud Powell, even though the highlights are the first albums. There are so many good variations of autumn themed tunes in '50s Jazz (in New York, Leaves, Nocturne). The emptiness that comes after saying something is good or personal without having descriptive skill to go with it.

Bill Evans Trio - Autumn Leaves

Bud Powell - Autumn in New York

Lou Donaldson Quartet - Autumn Nocturne

I always mean to watch Ozu films at the right time of year, and if I miss the season or microseason I postpone them, forget about them, then leave it for another year. I'll try to remember to watch An Autumn Afternoon and Late Autumn this year. It might already be too late for The End of Summer/Early Autumn.






Thames Path, 1 October 2017

[Bernice]

Weird, I do the exact same thing with Bill Evans. I'll add in the Bud Powell this year.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I remembered that I started a thread about Autumnal Music a couple of years ago - only to go looking for it and realise, to my horror, that it was a decade ago.

[IsavedLatin]

Normally I am a staunch member of the autumn fan club, but I'm struggling this year. I had never previously been much gone on summer, but I did find myself rooting for it strongly this year -- for the weather to be great, to allow me to make plans and see plenty of my friends and family. The summer where I was was largely shit, and so my hopes didn't quite pan out. So now the drawing in of the nights, without that foregoing contrast of warmth and light, is hitting me that bit harder than it ever has before.

As Ray Davies put it: "Tea and toasted buttered currant buns / Can't compensate for lack of sun / Because the summer's all gone."

Still, I acquiesced to the crap weather today by doing what is to me a quintessentially autumnal thing, and watched a classic film during the daytime -- His Girl Friday, which is a complete belter and I can highly recommend to anyone else feeling as I do.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Hate Autumn. Bloke next door has a load of trees in his back garden which overhang into ours, so most of the leaves (and conkers) end up in our garden. Fuck Autumn up its blustery arse.