the spectator | 7 september 2019 | http://www.spectator.co.uk 23
JAMES DELINGPOLE
My foolproof plan to beat the autumn blues
because of all the seed heads you have to
spend hours afterwards working out of its
ears. Anyway, it’s too hot to go on very long
walks. Unless, of course, it’s raining — which
it does more than you think because, face it,
August is fake summer. It’s more like early
autumn.
What’s great about this, though, is that
you don’t feel bad about staying indoors
sitting at a desk. On the contrary, you rath-
er enjoy the virtuous sensation of carrying
on, holding the fort, while all your com-
rades have deserted their posts. Better still,
though it’s work it’s only pretend work. Noone achieves anything in August. Everyone
assumes everyone else is away on holiday
and adjusts their expectations accordingly.
So: all the kudos for putting in the hours, but
only half the effort.
Because everyone is away, you feel under
no pressure to have any kind of social life.
For most of the year, I find it really stress-
ful trying to think up compelling excuses
for turning down invitations. But in summer
they dry up completely, leaving you with a
calendar so boundless and bare that you
suddenly become liberated, itchy of foot and
quite adventurous.
For example, this August, noticing that
we had an entire month of weekends (andweekdays, come to that) free, I decided that
finally the time had come to accept a long-
running open invitation to visit a mad Twit-
ter friend and his family at their country
retreat in Scotland.
Normally, as is the way with long-running
open invitations, this would never have hap-
pened. (The Fawn: ‘But who are these peo-
ple? You don’t know them. You can’t say yes
to some random stranger just because he
likes your Spectator column!’) But because
it was August, everyone’s resistance was low,
and I had no problem whatsoever dragging
my family on a five-hour drive north of the
Wall to hang out with this crazed Corbynista
I’d only ever encountered on social media.
To be fair, though, that was the sum
total of our August excitement. The rest
of it was just a daily reminder of why it is
people go away in August. But oddly, as I
flicked through their tweets about the lovely
places where they were staying I didn’t feel
remotely envious because I knew — as they
all knew — that no matter how exclusive
their resort, how talented their private cook
or how ancient their château, the time would
soon come when they’d be queuing up with
all the other Ryanair and easyJet passengers,
worrying whether they’d put in the right col-
lection time for the airport meet and greet,
wondering if there’d be anything edible in
the fridge when they got home and fretting
about all the news they’d missed.
The late Frank Johnson used to write
a regular column busting the myth that
nothing happens in August. But I’m going
to have to disagree. I’ve read lots and lots
in the newspapers about stuff that has pur-
portedly been happening: unprecedented
fires in the Amazon caused by President
Bolsonaro and global warming, mass pro-
tests against the prorogation of parliament.
As soon as you start examining the detail,
though, you realise it’s all fake news cooked
up to fill space.
Anyway, enough whining. I’m off to the
beach. The thing I forgot to mention is that
though I didn’t take a holiday all summer,
I have just popped down to Devon for one
now. It’s great: summer weather at autumn
prices — and emptiness. You should try it
some time.Y
ou know that awful, gnawing, depress-
ing feeling you’ve got right now? The
one that notices how shockingly early
the sun is setting and how shabby and played
out and autumnal the borders are looking
and how listless and flat everything feels
what with no holidays to look forward to
and the house empty of kids? The one that
groans at the thought of all those uncom-
pleted tasks and the mountain of hassle and
nose-to-the-grindstone grimness which must
be negotiated, somehow, between now and
Christmas?
Well, I hate to say this but I haven’t got
it. For possibly the first time in my life since
my parents shipped me off to that horrid,
spartan boarding school I called Colditz, I’m
experiencing early September without the
faintest urge to want to kill myself. I’m not
thinking back wistfully to those calamari in
the taverna by that secluded inlet or the fat,
red ripeness of those Italian tomatoes or the
azure stillness of the Mediterranean on that
first morning dip because this summer hols,
for once, I didn’t do any of that stuff.
I didn’t even have a holiday in England
or Wales or Scotland. And that’s my secret.
If you want to beat the September blues, stay
home all summer and just carry on working.
It won’t make you feel better but that’s not
really the aim. What matters is that by the
end of a summer at home, you’re inured to
the pain, like the old lag in the POW camp,
watching the newcomers arrive from their
freshly crashed Lancasters, their silk scarves
still fresh and clean from Blighty, their eyes
bright with the prospect of camaraderie and
imminent escape. ‘Hah! Let’s see if you’re so
cheerful after a night on a bed where all the
wooden slats have been removed to prop up
the tunnels,’ you mutter.
Don’t worry: what I’m not going to do
is wax lyrical about the secret amazingness
of England in August, whose hidden gems
we tragically overlook when we fly off to
the Med. That’s because England in August
is dreary as hell. The fields round where I
live, so fresh and verdant and beguiling in
June, have turned yellow with nasty scratchy
spindly grass that even the sheep won’t eat
and thistles whose spines work their way
into your socks. Walking the dog is a chore
For possibly the first time in my life
I’m experiencing early September
without the faintest urge to kill myself