Senescence Proceeds Apace

It's been overcast for about a week now and it rained on and off all weekend. The daylight is gone before 5 p.m. And it's cold. Well, cold for here, anyway. Somewhere in the 50's. I used to love that. I waited all the long, hot, miserable summer for the clouds and the rain and the cold to come back.

And now I don't. It must be my advancing decrepitude. The poor, ole fella can't take it any more. And in last week's Spectator I find that Ron Liddle can't either:

I realised this week that I am also past the point in life where I appreciate autumn. While once upon a time, with my silly head full of Ray Bradbury novels and Keatsian melancholy, I would be positively excited by the passing of summer and the new chill in the air and whiff of decay, these days I lock myself inside with several copious beakerfuls of the warm south, shipped in by the crate from Oddbins. The whiff of decay is still around, though, no matter how tightly I bolt the windows. I am also infuriated by that autumn thing which I used to so enjoy, the copper-brown mounds of fallen leaves. There comes a point in your life where you start to think autumn leaves are untidy and that someone should clear them up, and it won't be me, with my knee being how it is.

There's more, but rest of the piece is about taxes and unemployment benefit or something. But that bit was endearing. It's nice to have one's gloomy sentiments validated, or at least echoed, in print.