I love October.
There is something about that change in the seasons. Cosy nights in my PJs in front of the fire, wearing jeans and wellies when I’m out with the dogs and then colourful tights and boots at other times.
Velvet and corduroy, russet orange, autumn greens and burnished gold, burgundy and deep navy.
Over the border in south Somerset, the land of my birth, October is the month when the carnival comes to town. It always puts me in mind of my favourite Ray Bradbury story, the dark fantasy novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, with this classic opening:
First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. Not that all months aren’t rare. But there be bad and good, as the pirates say. Take September, a bad month: school begins. Consider August, a good month: school hasn’t begun yet. July, well, July’s really fine: there’s no chance in the world for school. June, no doubting it, June’s best of all, for the school doors spring wide and September’s a billion years away.
But you take October, now. School’s been on a month and you’re riding easier in the reins, jogging along. You got time to think of the garbage you’ll dump on old man Prickett’s porch, or the hairy-ape costume you’ll wear to the YMCA the last night of the month. And if it’s around October twentieth and everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash gray at twilight, it seems Halloween will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bedsheets around corners.
The first Saturday in October is always Ilminster Carnival, which is followed a week later by Chard’s. It always fills me with great pride to see the colourful entries from my home towns – the big floats (not so many these days) and the beautiful costumes people have spent hours, days, weeks and months putting together.
People who bother, people who care.
Extraordinary loud music, balloon and glow stick sellers pushing their carts through the crowds and the smell of hot dogs and onions filling the air.
After a stop at Tesco for the loo, we walked along the old railway line to the funfair. Underdressed teenage girls and boys with mullets hung around the dodgems.
One ride on the waltzer was enough for me, as was watching the grandchildren defying gravity, going forwards – and backwards at great speed.
The two of them had been full of bravado but by the end of the evening, both were very quiet. And rather pale.
We walked through a housing estate and back to the car. And we drew into Lush Places by the light of the Hunter’s Moon, tired, a bit sick but happy.
(If you’d like to see my videos from the carnival, please hop across to my Instagram and Facebook pages. I refuse to pay WordPress extra to enable me to upload my own videos to this page.)
Maddie Grigg 