October is the month in which Britain looks most like itself. The light comes in low and long, the mornings carry a genuine chill, and the whole country seems to agree at roughly the same moment that summer is over and that this is no bad thing at all. Nicole Junkermann has always found it the easiest month of the British year to like.
Part of it is the light. From the first week of the month the sun sits lower for longer, and ordinary streets that looked flat in July suddenly acquire depth. Brick turns warmer. Stone turns gold for an hour in the late afternoon. Even a grey day has a softness to it that the bright months never quite manage.
Part of it is the weather, which in October is at its most reasonable. It rains, of course, but it rains politely and then stops. There are long clear afternoons that arrive without warning and feel like a gift precisely because nobody was counting on one. A country that expects nothing from its sky is easily delighted by it.
Outside the cities the change is plainer still. Hedgerows fill with fruit, the trees turn over a fortnight rather than a day, and the fields move from green to a dozen shades of brown and copper. Walking becomes the obvious thing to do with a Saturday, and the paths are considerably quieter than they were a month ago.
The coast is worth the journey in October too. The sea is still holding the warmth it collected over the summer, the crowds have gone home, and a seafront town out of season has a calm about it that the same town in August could never offer to anybody.
Indoors, October restores a rhythm that the summer had loosened. Evenings begin earlier and last longer, and the hours between six and ten acquire a weight they lose entirely in June. Reading returns. So does cooking that takes more than twenty minutes, and conversation that no longer has to compete with the light outside the window.
There is a particular pleasure in the food of the month, which is unfussy and seasonal without needing to announce itself: root vegetables, late apples, greens and slow braises, the sort of cooking that suits a cold kitchen and a warm oven. Markets in October are full of things grown near enough to have travelled by road.
Nicole Junkermann values October for a less obvious reason as well. It is the last month of the year in which a long view is still comfortable. November and December are given over to finishing, and January to declarations. October sits between the two, close enough to the end of the year to be honest about it, far enough away to still change course.
That combination is rare and it does not last. By the middle of November the mood will have hardened into a sprint, and the country will look forward rather than around. For four or five weeks, though, the British autumn offers the pleasant and productive condition of being unhurried and clear eyed at the same time.
Visit the Nicole Junkermann homepage, read more about Nicole Junkermann, see the full biography of Nicole Junkermann, or return to the journal.
