It’s October, it’s autumn – and that only means one thing

It’s cold but crispy; the sun a watery yellow against your skin, the sky a startling, duck-egg blue. Still, this pretty, halcyon image means one thing, and one thing only: it’s Gilmore Girls season. Yes, it’s autumn – fall, if you’re in the US – time for pumpkins and fairy-lights and hot soup and cold fingers in cut-off gloves clasping the hand of someone you love ; a Christopher, perhaps; a Max or a Luke or a Lane. If you live in a small town or village, you may have already started to see Halloween decorations popping up in people’s windows; a spider web decorating the corner of a notice in the corner shop, perhaps, a stack of gourds being rolled out to the middle of the town square or water fountain or that bus stop that nobody local would dream of sitting in, because it smells of wee. We want towering roast dinners and lashings of gravy you could sink a small boat in; we want fire pits and smores and spiced lattes and family road trips to pick pumpkins, the highlight of the year: Bobby Pickett’s “Monster Mash” blaring, someone stuffing down a sausage roll, someone else crying because the iPad has run out of batteries on the short ride out to some boggy farm in Essex, hot chocolate WITH cream AND marshmallows spilling down your faces in the boot of the car while you scrape fifteen layers of mud off your wellies.