Monday, August 21, 2017

New Beginnings

I don't like this time of year.  August is still officially summer but it's chilly now in the early morning and the heat has gone out of the sun; it's as if it's tired and just putting in the time until the excitements of the brand new season of mellow fruitfulness and harvest festivals.

Newspapers and magazines are still dutifully promoting barbecues and swimsuits and recipes for salads but somehow you feel that their heart isn't in it and the shops that are now getting in the woollens for autumn seem much fresher and more attractive. (Let's not talk about the catalogue with Christmas stuff that someone sent me last week. I'm pretending it didn't happen.)

Yes, it's time that summer was over for another year. and even the schoolchildren are starting to feel they want to get back and see their friends, and the new pencil-cases, fancy notebooks and novelty rubbers are flying off the shelves.

I don't know whether it's the result of having spent a lifetime in and around schools - father a headmaster, teacher at one time myself, mother of schoolchildren, husband a headmaster too (oh yes, Freud could have a field day).- but I always feel that a new year starts in September, not in January.

Who can really plan new beginnings in January?  New Year resolutions are famously hard to keep.  Dismal weather, dark nights, the Christmas credit card bills dropping on to the mat - who can possibly feel fired up and enthusiastic?

September, though...  Somehow it always seems to me like the new notebook you got on the first day of term, enticingly pristine, and you always thought that this time you would be able to keep it neat, without all the blots and crumpled pages and sums marked wrong that the last one had.

This year, come September, my desk will be tidy, my accounts will be up to date, the book will progress according to timetable and I will sit down at my desk each morning with new vigour and a song in my heart. I can hardly wait.

August still has two more limping weeks to go, but I think I might go out now and buy a fancy notebook and a novelty rubber. Just to be ready.

2 comments:

Donna S said...

Wonderful post Aline, and right on the button? I do so dislike August. In my part of the world (southern Ontario) it is always humid and hot and uncomfortable. I call August the silly season too - we get millions of tourists in my town, bringing lots of income for the merchants but making it hard for the residents to get around in unaccustomed traffic and line ups. I find electronics always pick this time of year to break down, perhaps from the humidity? The car always needs repair and relatives I did not even know I had show up at my door or in the mail with unwanted invitations to reunions and birthday parties we do not want to go to.

I am with you - bring on September/October. Lovely scenery, pumpkins, start of school, Halloween and Thanksgiving! Yay!

Aline Templeton said...

Donis, I do so feel for you with the tourists. Here it is the Edinburgh Festival at the moment and the city is like an anthill. And as you say, it's all very well for the merchants and hoteliers but horrible for the residents and with all the booths for the Fringe activities my beautiful, elegant city looks like a shanty-town. Can't wait till it's finished!