Every city, I believe, has its season. Just think of the cliches: “Paris in the spring.” “Autumn in New York.”* I always thought my favourite season was spring, but I’m starting to realise it depends entirely on where I am.
In Cape Town, it has to be spring. There’s a special, indescribable smell in the air about two days before all the oak trees pop their new leaves; a fresh, green smell full of energy and excitement. I have a lousy sense of smell, but somehow I’m attuned to this one; most of my friends say they don’t know what I’m talking about, and I have never detected it in any other place. But Cape Town in the spring. It’s beautiful. It’s that smell. (Well, it might also be those budding oak trees, and the flowers, and the clear blue skies, before everything gets sweaty and infested with tourists… but for me, it’s the smell that defines it.)
Johannesburg is incredible in summer. Hot, dry air, but lush gardens and green treelined streets**. (Or purple treelined streets, as the case may be. All those jacarandas.) And best of all – the afternoon thunderstorms! Glittery blue skies cloud over, the light turns ominously purple, then bang! crash! bazoom! Buckets of rain coming down in huge, warm drops. Mad lightning temper tantrums. Then it’s over, everything’s calm and fresh, and the air is electric-smelling and rosy as the sun goes down.
Zurich comes into its own in winter. It’s remarkably lovely all year round, of course – old world romance on a lake? Hard to go wrong – but Switzerland means snow, let’s face it, and when everything’s sparkling like a great big wedding cake, well, that’s just right. Isn’t it?
But much to my surprise, I’ve concluded that London is an autumn city. Since I bitch so much about winter here - the darkness of the days, the interminable greyness, the relentless bloody length of the miserable season*** - you’d think I’d be sold on spring. And spring is good. Daffodils cheer a person up quite wonderfully after all that winter.
But autumn! Autumn seems to come more naturally. After the muggy confusion of the London summer**** – public transport is a horror, it’s so humid you can’t breathe and the sunshine is liable to give way to rain at the drop of a sandal - autumn makes sense in the same way that winter does in Zurich. When the streets are misty, they take on a properly Victorian mien, like the London you imagine from books. My jogging route through Osterley Park is suddenly quieter, more romantic, richer in colour and texture. Flocks of birds swoop over the lake; in fog, the park seems that much more like a working farm (which it is) and less like a suburban oasis (which it also is). The train to town takes me past astonishing bursts of red and orange among the hedges. The evening light over the river is purple, but rather than being brooding – like the purple storm skies of Joburg – it’s velvety and comforting. In autumn, London is mysterious, and grand, and cosy, all at once.
The only problem is that winter is coming.
_____
* Not that I would know. Never crossed the Atlantic, and my only visit to Paris (so far) was in summer. Not just any summer, either. That summer.
** Joburg has been described, perhaps hyperbolically, as the world’s largest man-made forest. There’s not much natural beauty there – let’s be frank: it’s a giant minedump – so they had to invent some. There are a lot of trees. Autumn is spectacular, but over in the blink of an eye. In summer, though, the avenues are beautiful.
*** Three good months in a year is not the way it’s supposed to be. Three months bad weather is about all we need, thanks. I’m from down south. I know what a real climate is.
**** Which is rather wonderful in its own way, of course. Long warm evenings and masses of free events – outdoor movie screenings, concerts, festivals – but also an unfortunate rash of pasty, podgy poms taking their shirts off. [shudder]
