My Autumn resolution... 🍂

This will be the year I lean into pumpkin spice and chunky knitwear instead of sad girl hibernation 🍂

I remember clearly my Mum’s 40th birthday. Before she arrived into the Reception class which was her workplace, one of her colleagues had propped a foam ghost-train witch at her desk, staring unseeingly ahead over towards the reading records and tank of stick insects. I was about seven, and I was fascinated, pushing my fingers into the spongy creases of the hag’s yellow face (the dummy, not Mum, who remains the most elegant woman I know…). That was what it meant to be 40 back then, to some people at least; it was the moment women transformed from succulent mother-giver to Klimt’s weeping crone from The Three Ages of Women. Birthdays have always been a mix of joy and expectation, of gentle mickey-taking and fond nostalgia. I read recently that the phrase ‘life begins at 40’ harks back to the days when your children would, as you had been, married and would be out of your hair by the time they were 20, giving you the independence you had craved.

This year, on the day with the least daylight and the longest night, I’ll be turning 40. My birthday falls on the winter solstice.

Those goals we all make to fulfil by the end of the year: ‘By Christmas, I’ll be at target weight…’ ‘By the end of the year, I’ll have saved £5,000…’ all stack up with extra intensity if your birthday is right at the end of the year. Otherwise you face the New Year not only a year older, but also with the previous year’s resolutions eyeing you judgily, as if to say ‘You didn’t manage any of those things you dreamed of, AND you’re even older now, to boot.’

As we step down into the darker days of the year; as the greenery decays and the weather turns, this is not a time of year I enjoy much.

Each day getting gradually worse, I gloomily say to myself as I strap my cycling helmet on and ride off in the drizzle towards another day at work where I’ll watch all light leach from the sky and leave for home again in darkness, my cycle commute from the tram stop extra-perilous. My lights, my fluorescent jacket and my reflectors all stand for nothing if someone misses them and takes out my back wheels as I’m cycling down some petrol-rainbow tarmac road.

Pumpkins handmade by my clever sister.

Society has always needed its festivals in the darkness - Diwali, Bonfire Night, Christmas, Hallowe’en, Chinese New Year - all celebrated with near-equal enthusiasm in primary schools along with Children in Need and Christmas Jumper Day and the myriad other celebrations

. A never-ending whirl of activities needing £2 and costumes to provide, all to be delivered at the busiest time of year at work. Publishing needs its big Christmas push to provide bestsellers.

But this year will be different. I’ve made a final-quarter-year resolution. This will be the year I don’t find Autumn depressing. The long nights and rainy days will give opportunities for new things, for autumn crafts and hot water bottles and new books. This Autumn will be better. I will get enough sleep and turn my face to the sun when it shines.

Life has its uncertainty at each stage; and the insight that comes from the experiences of overcoming; of persevering and of trying again might be the most valuable ones I have, as I prepare to step forward into a new decade.