Someone has started painting "autumn" ...

Today Someone had splashed vibrant colours on the wet pavement. The canvas of Norn Iron is having its grey landscape splashed with red, orange, yellow, brown. Well at least a jolly good attempt is being made, and it makes a nice contrast - one has to give it that.

I scuffled through the bright leaves wondering if I can pick up the colour and preserve it for the winter...just splotches of yellow, orange and red when it goes all dark and cold. Imagine a frieze of autumnal leaves filling the living room wall? :) Now that kind of art really is fabulous - it will brighten up winter and create a permanent living firey blaze in the room. I bet it will even *feel* warmer just to have the colours on the wall.

I used to revel in Keats - but I have to confess that reading "Ode to Autumn" in Norn Iron is always depressing. There is now a dawning realisation that there is always going to be a distinct absence of the good old sunny blaze of Keatsian Autmnal Glory over here. All that palaver that Keats makes about "Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness" is quite out of sync here. As for "the maturing sun" it is detinitely more weedy here and I haven't seen much of it at all. I wonder how many of us in Norn Iron here sat glaring at the TV displaying the inhabitants of England flaunting their warm blazing "end of summer" frolics. How inconsiderate of them to lie languidly and supinely on the grass and beach! How provocating of them to go swimming with barely any clothes on while we - Norn Ironers - piled on the fleeces and cardigans, and cowered submissively indoors. While they waved their bbq implements around and let the smoke rise from their happily burning sausages, we switched on the oven, grilled our chicken and crouched on our sofas.

Keats hadn't a flipping clue. I seriously don't think that bees in Norn Iron will think that the "warm days will never cease" - more likely they are cursing and swearing under their breath as they get soaked and drenched. More likely the Norn Iron bees will be really bad-tempered unlike their happy sunny English bee cousins. Keats obviously did *not* have Norn Iron in mind when he wrote.

Now Shelley - now he was more with the Norn Iron scene.
O West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,"

That is more like it. Dear old Autumn blowing in the Winter. Now Norn Iron does proper winters. I love autumn, but I also love the stark beauty of winter (provided it doesn't do an overdripping season). The shapes and silhouettes of trees - which we never see at any other season. The dark scuptured branches and tree trunks. It is like seeing the world pared back to its bare essentials - sans flowers, green, colours - and realising it is still magical, still artistically maginficent.

Hats off to good ole Shelley for capturing the essence of an autumn we recognise. An autumn that "HAH" as it throws pre-winter rain, winds and cold at us. . Norn Iron extends a hand of comradeship and congratulations to the ole young handsome Romantic.