Summer's gone.

The interwebs are today alive with blogs and tweets observing the first of September. It’s a day that doesn’t mark any particular holiday here in the UK, made special simply by the end of August and the start of September taking children back to school.

Even though it’s a long time since the turning over from August into September carried any special significance for me — school is a long while past, my university life was non-typical with academic holidays meaning nothing, we have no children of our own to keep us watching these seasons — the rhythm learned in 14 years of school sticks with me, and seemingly with many others. There is no marked change in the weather from ‘summer’ to ‘autumn’, especially not this year, but as of today the summer is, I think, over.

This is the first year in a long time when my two months of summer haven’t been marked by some major event, be it at work (the Big Summer Youth Event™), or a life thing (new job, moving house, moving country). This summer has been rather nondescript, populated by happenings that came and went independent of time.

Still, according to the learned rhythm, I can feel my brain shifting up a gear. It’s partly external (now when I make a phone call there is more likely to be someone at the other end to pick up) and partly internal.

Seasons turn in more ways than one.