For a good autumn

Enjoy the warm days yet to come, clinging to summer. Gather in the garden, have a last barbecue, dance under fairy lights.

Celebrate the autumn equinox with an abundant meal: a hearty stew, fresh bread, and a sweet wine, maybe the first pumpkin dish of the season, or a cake with self-picked apples.

Do an autumn cleaning, which is the end-of-summer version of a spring cleaning. Put away your sunhat and your sandals, dig out the warm and the woolly things, the scarves and shawls, the thick socks, and the cosy jumpers for the cold spells to come. Get rid of what you didn't wear for the second summer in a row. Air out your bedding and blankets. Clean the windows in order to let in as much of the fading light as possible.

Bake more bread. Sweet bread, hearty bread, spicy bread. With cinnamon, with herbs, with apples, with nuts, with honey, with pink pepper, etc.

Take lots of film photos. Of turning leaves, of late roses, dahlias, asters, the last lush blooms, the fading and withered flowers, of mushrooms, of the warm colours, of afternoon scenes in golden sunlight, on rainy days, in foggy fields.

Visit the graves of your passed-on loved ones.

Make your own sweets.

Celebrate Samhain and/or Halloween by preparing oddly coloured food or by dressing up as an elegant witch, an absinthe fairy, or a forlorn vampire.

Make a quirky advent calendar for a friend.

Go to the cinema alone.

Make train trips. To the sea, to an exhibition, to sleepy towns, to Christmas markets.

Build a gingerbread house with a twist.

Plan Twelvetide activities: singing folk songs, watching nostalgic movies, wrapping gifts, reading to someone, living by candlelight, brewing a punch.

Have a solstice feast.

2. Sansculottides 233

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