Changing seasons, time to prepare and reflect
Time to pack up from summer months and a pressing urge to make preparation for the winter months to come.
IT’S CERTAINLY autumn now and it has always been my favourite season.
Different temperatures, weathers and different colours.
We’re no longer being marketed to with cold drinks or ice cream, more tempted to purchase extravagant coffees and desserts from international chain coffeehouses.
Thankfully, I don’t go a bundle for pumpkin spice coffee. Rather, I yearn for the older treats of this time of year – carving out ghoulish faces into swedes, bobbing for cox apples, black peas (Lancashire by origin but delicious with malt vinegar no matter where served), oxtail, toffee apples, treacle toffee, pie and peas.
A new season heralds all things delicious and comforting.
A new season also heralds change – on a practical level, time to pack up from summer months and a pressing urge to make preparation for the winter months to come.
Every year I enjoy the feeling of getting ready to hunker down, and each year I fondly remember the Moomin tales read to us by my Dad (whereby all Moomins and guests filled their tummies with pine needles prior to settling down to hibernate).
Another pleasure is to be able to look out online for coverage of wild bears waddling around Alaska, full of salmon and ready to get through the winter on their supplies of fat under thick fur.
I identify very closely with them on a number of levels!
Reflection on the year so far begins now. I always begin the year with a general intent to make a positive contribution personally and professionally.
Not so much a list of New Year Resolutions, more a mindset of positivity and hope.
I like also to take time to consider what I’m grateful for this year, what maybe can still be done, what goals are achieved and what contributions at work or at home are still realistic to work towards.
At work we ensure that seasonal planned maintenance checks and tasks are completed, that emergency provisions and arrangements are confirmed and in place, and that we’re looking after ourselves also – vitamins, fresh air, hydration and exercise can all be built into our working day. (This does not preclude a weekly lunchtime treat of chips and gravy from Pearsons – I told you I am a bear!).
Still with a few months to go before the clear slate of a new calendar year, it’s not that there’s a pressing urge to achieve everything, more that there’s a valuable window at this time each year to reflect and to refocus before we hurtle headlong into the festive periods.
And hurtle we tend to – we’re encouraged by media and advertisers to focus upon and to prepare for Christmas, not as a celebration but as a commitment. The danger is that in focussing on what ‘needs’ to be bought or booked or arranged in preparation for the end of the year, we can lose sight of what there is to enjoy in the moment still now.
The light, the colours, crisp mornings, the scents of bonfires, late flowering blooms, toffee, fireworks, soups and stews.
All are beautiful now, all are fleeting.
Take a moment, it’s always worth it.