Final year

For the first time, I feel positive to be back here. I love English autumn, it feels crisp - the leaves and the air. The sun is so piercing when it is cold and clear and windy. It feels simple and satisfying and I love to have a cold face while eating hot food with gloves on outdoors. It makes me think of kicking around in the garden when I was little, and rosehips and conkers and slushing around in the old goat field on the tyre swing. Autumn is nostalgic. I remember apples and sitting in the apple tree at Bradfield, and being dragged on walks and seeing the mice in the hedge and having mittens on a string that went through my coat. All the plants are dying, but some are drying out and looking burnt and sharp - burrs and seed pods. I remember all those autumn poems we had to do at school with acronyms, and drawing blackberries and making lino cuts of orange leaves and leaf prints. Harvest songs at school, and very pale sky. It rains but when it chills right through you then hot chocolate tastes better, and tea is perfect and fresh socks are a wonderful pleasure.

Japanese trees were also beautiful, and I am sad to miss the changing of the leaves. But the autumn rain felt dank, not fresh or stormy or windy, just humid. There wasn't even that amazing smell of rain on dry ground, it was just like water present in the air, that smudged against your skin and around your hairline. It didn't whip up your hair like in England. I thought it was funny to come back and see all the anoraks in the UK - there are so many depressing things about England, like the grumbling faces and the black clothes for winter - but sunny autumn in the countryside is still best here. Soon it will be bonfire night, I will go to Midsummer Common again and go on my favourite ride that makes your stomach disappear.