Autumn Glory On The Bus Route To Hitchin

On an impulse, stirred by a stubborn resistance on the part of the weather to conform to the equally obstinate insistence by the Met Office that the idyllic warm sunshine, cool breezes and joyfully clear skies are over and the overcast, chilly, wet winter has come upon us, I went to Hitchin this afternoon. There were clouds, firm-edged, flat-bottomed cumulus like snow heaped on a transparent surface above us, floating almost imperceptibly as if reluctant to move, determined to bestow on the world below the full benefit of their glory. There was a coolness, more invigorating than uncomfortable. When the sun did disappear, it was never for long.

It was altogether an afternoon when it seems ungrateful to be indoors. Two days ago we heard from a friend in Harare, who said that Zimbabwe is experiencing a really serious heat-wave. She was not complaining. Rather she expressed her sympathy for those in the hot spots of the country, the Zambesi Valley and Lowveld generally, where even in a normal year all life outdoors slows to a pace of minimal effort and the only movement in the Bush is the odd bateleur eagle gliding high on widespread wings. Not for nothing was October known as 'suicide' month in Zimbabwe.

But here in Luton, today, it was alternatively comfortably warm and refreshingly cool. As I have been moved to do many times during this year's astonishingly benign autumn, I wondered again today whether there is anywhere else on the planet so blest in the matter of weather. If the term 'Whinging Pom', purportedly used in Australia to describe British immigrants to their country, has as it's origin the climate of the United Kingdom, then all I can say is that the Brits - we Brits - are a hard lot to please.

So it was that I felt constrained to go somewhere today. Anywhere, out of doors, as much in grateful obligation as for the joy of it, for surely the Met Office cannot persist much longer in being so wrong. Weather this good, like all special treats, can't go on to the point where we take it for granted.

Among its other good points, and there are many, Luton is conveniently placed to travel by bus or by coach, to London, Oxford, or Cambridge, three prime destinations in the U.K. In addition, there are frequent services to not a few other centres, St. Albans, Bedford to name only two. But since it had taken me all morning and a good part of the afternoon to decide on abandoning my planned programme and making the move, and since the evenings are noticeably drawing in, I chose a closer venue - Hitchin.

It would have been worth the effort just for the drive. No less than three local buses run frequently to Hitchin, each by a different route. I boarded one at random, which called in at several little villages on the way. It would have been worth the trip for the drive alone. We left Luton in mid-afternoon

Autumn, "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, close bosom-friend of the maturing sun", inspired Keats to express his appreciation in an ode specifically for all that the season meant to him. I first heard his lines with an almost scveptical wonder as a schoolboy in the heat and boredom of a classroom in Rhodesia and marvelled that a poet could be so eloquently moved. Today I understood. Maybe this year's exceptionally warm, sunny autumn has something to do with it. Never before have I seen the trees so ablaze with colour, from deep maroon to brilliant yellow, with all shades in between, and greens and browns in endless exuberant yet delicate gradations. On the ground beneath, the thick carpet of fallen leaves was a joyous riot of stupendously variegated colours, shapes, designs. If elves and pixies had bobbed up among them to make merry and cavort about it would not have been in the least surprising, just wonderfully appropriate.

Nature, God, vibrantly alive and rejoicing in a final fanfare before winter sets in. Who can, who dares, doubt the significance of all this glory?

The Complete Poems of John Keats (Modern Library) USA
Complete Poems of John Keats (Wordsworth Poetry) (Wordsworth Poetry Library) UK

By guest blogger: Brian Murgatroyd