Travelling back on the autumn mists of time
As someone who prefers a cosy blanket to a beach towel, Nicola Rippon loves this time of year as sights and smells take her back to childhood autumns in Derby
THERE is something about the arrival of autumn that leaves me wallowing in a swell of nostalgia. While early September still carries hope of a warm afternoon or two, there’s something so comforting about the approach of cooler days. As someone who’s always favoured a cosy blanket over a beach towel, autumn seems the perfect time of year.
I’m sure my 1970s childhood is, in part, to blame. It was probably the same wherever you attended school, but I went to Dale, between Porter Road and Clarence Road in Normanton. Great importance was placed on marking the turning of the seasons and appreciating the changes around us. Every tiny detail.
If there was a dew-coated cobweb in the playground, out we’d go to study it, draw it, and write poems about it. If the rowan tree in the small garden beside the terrapin classrooms was in berry, we’d examine it. If the new season had arrived, then our lovely Mrs Smith would read us a poem at morning assembly.
I can still hear the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Pied Beauty, or John Keats’ To Autumn … “Glory Be to God for dappled things” and “Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness” indeed.
Nowadays, these cooler mornings, I can look towards the city from my upstairs window in Mickleover, and often see the remnant of one of those early autumn mists as it rises off the Derwent.
Every time, it makes me all nostalgic for autumns past. I have memories of strolling on Normanton Park where the trees would always deliver the most beautiful, mottled leaves of gold and russet. I can’t have been the only child who used to search for the most beautiful leaves to press between the pages of a heavy book. Even 40-odd years later I occasionally find one still when flipping through an old encyclopaedia. Sometimes, if I found a truly special leaf I would take it to school where, if I was lucky, it might feature on the class nature table. Miss Clarke, the headmistress of Dale, was very keen that all her pupils had a well-rounded education. As well as the formal subjects, classical music, and poetry we were taught how to recognise different trees from their leaves. So, the nature table was always very informative. While at the start of term it might be covered in seashells and pebbles from our summer holidays, at this time of year it would feature colourful leaves of varied species. Just the sight of a single fallen leaf will take me back to school just as surely as will the smell of a jug of custard – that’s the beauty of nostalgia. It rears up out of nowhere, triggered by a familiar, but perhaps longforgotten, sight, sound, or scent.
Autumn was also a time of collecting fresh-from-the-oak acorns and spikey horse chestnut husks with their glossy conkers peeking out. I suspect the boys at school judged a conker by its size and its potential for beating their friends. For me it was all about the gloss. I hated to see conkers all smashed up and wanted to save as many as possible from the fate of being put on a string and bashed together.
I’m pretty sure that none of the wonderful poems about autumn that we learned at Dale were by AA Milne, but he is responsible for one of my favourite quotes about the season. His Winnie-the-Pooh said that autumn is: “A time of hot chocolatey mornings, and toasty marshmallow evenings, and, best of all, leaping into leaves!”
And again, it triggers a memory. Of strolling through the Arboretum about 1973 with my Grandma Buckler, and admiring the perfect piles of russeting leaves, kept tidy by the park keepers there. And back even further to Birdcage Walk in London, September 1972, and my much more rebellious Nana Rippon and I are plunging into huge mounds of leaves, kicking them this way and that, much to the weary observation of a poor chap with a broom and a lot more work to do.
But what’s autumn without a little bit of naughtiness? Like scrumping apples from the trees overhanging the boundary fence of the local allotments and picking blackberries from the wild bushes at the bottom of our garden in Overdale Road. Come harvest time, of course, we always celebrated not only Mother Nature’s fingerprints, but the hard work and sacrifice of the farmers, small holders and allotmenteers who brought us our food.
As a child I attended St Augustine’s Church, on Upperdale Road, and its Sunday School on Almond Street.
Each harvest the congregation would gather all manner of supplies – fruits and vegetables grown on their allotments, breads and cakes baked in their kitchens, or just tinned goods from the pantry, or specially purchased for the occasion at Fine Fayre in the Cavendish. After the harvest service they were divided up and distributed to the older, and needier, residents of the parish. Even to a nine-year-old there was something so wonderful about it and about sharing food at the harvest supper.
It’s part of why I’ve always loved autumn so much. It’s sometimes the little things that we yearn for.
I wonder whether, back then, Miss Clarke knew she was planting the seeds of the nostalgia I have today? Knowing her, I suspect she might …