"THE DAY"

"THE DAY", for me, is one of the most exciting and exhilerating days of the year. THE DAY [ok, I'll stop putting it into capitals now, ok?]  is the day, usually towards the end of August, beginning of September where you step out of your door in the morning and feel that tiny hint of something in the air, that infitesimal trace of coolness, that lets you know that autumn is on it's way, closely followed by winter.

I love that feeling of anticipation that it brings. The feeling that something amazing is just around the corner. Also for me, it heralds the possibility of cold, crisp, frosty mornings where the air burns your tubes and is so cold that you can feel it enter ever single fissure of your lungs. Frankly, I can think of no better way to start a day!

As a child, I always much preferred the winter months to the summer. Maybe this had something to do with the fact that my mother absolutely despised the heat of mid-summer and always looked foward to autumn with an eagerness usually reserved for small toddlers looking forward to the arival of santa.

The day signalled the end of summer, getting everything ready to go back to school, the promise of darker nights with bonfires and fireworks and Christmas. It was the changing of the trees and walking through heaps of crunchy leaves by the side of the road.

Once I was older and had left home, my mother and I would always phone each other. "Did you feel it? Did you feel that it's the day today?" and usually we'd both have been heading to the phone at the same time to call each other. I find the same thing with my own daughter now. I've educated her on recognising the day and she gets just as excited about it as I do, which is incredibly gratifying.