They say Autumn is the season of loss, but they’re wrong. Autumn is the season of peace, quiescence, rest – the time to fold your coat and retreat. Autumn is your friend if you let it.

The season of loss is before Spring, partways into the new year, when your expectations are still high and your guard is down; when the earth rises with a dying odour and out of mind comes flooding back. That’s when they break up with you. It’s when your favourite scarf disappears in a pint of bitter too many and old friends turn up dead.

Reality moves from door to door, howling of old obligations and choices. The rocks whimper as the lines start to tear. We grasp and panic for whatever purchase we can reach; whomever we reach. This is the time when things go wrong.

Whoever is still your friend when February eats a hole through your coat is worth sticking by through another year. Hunker down, have a few and hold on to that scarf. Spring’ll come crawling soon, and who knows what happens then…