It might be autumn but you probably won't see any leaves falling for a while yet. Photo / File
It might be autumn but you probably won't see any leaves falling for a while yet. Photo / File
It is, in calendar terms, autumn.
For time has marched us into…March.
Please read on…it doesn't get too much worse.
So yes, the calendar tells us it is autumn but Mother Nature, who can be a wonderfully stubborn old lass, does not see it that way and is quite rightlyletting us know there is still some bright and clement wee times to be enjoyed yet before the falling leaves stuff the mower and the windows begin to greet condensation like an old friend.
This is the stage of the year that has long been dubbed the "Indian" summer…although in these increasingly touchy times I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say that for fear of being accused of something I am most certainly not.
So yeah, we have embarked on the sort-of season called the Indian summer ( any complaints at my use of that term please direct them to my lawyer…also he isn't up for parole until 2024 so best of luck).
One: corporate clowns who cannot see the people who so often rely on them because the shield of avarice gets in the way.
Two: cheap apples (galas are good at the moment).
Three: the weather.
And you can't do a thing about the corporate rubbish and the weather unless you are a billionaire who lives in a self-supporting isolated pod 3km under the plains of Arizona.
"What's the weather going to do today?" is a very well-worn opening sentence to casual conversation between friends and strangers.
Roger Moroney
"Who knows?" is the equally well-worn response.
For this can be a changeable time for weather things.
So then, at this early autumnal time the weather so far is rather fair and agreeable and warmly receptive to the sound of music.
"He's off the track again," one of my readers will likely say.
What the other says is anyone's guess.
"He's started early," others on the fringe of readership will say as they frown and look toward their own fridges.
For on that clement night of the first of March, as I awaited the arrival of sleep, I mused about the weather and pondered the strong links it has always had to music.
The pondering almost grew to obsession as I grasped more and more links between these two colourful and sometimes unpredictable slices of life.
Feel free to embark on your own journey of weather and musical linkage if sleep evades you.
Easy start…that great quartet called The Four Seasons, and Neil Finn wrote a song for Crowded House called Four Seasons in One Day, which anyone who has hunkered down for a time in Melbourne will easily appreciate.
There was a blues chap called Johnny Winter (and his brother Edgar) and the guitar chap with The Police was Andy Summers.
The marvellous Dusty Springfield, and the boss man Bruce Springsteen.
In the early 70s Mungo Jerry rolled out a massive hit called In the Summertime and the Small Faces put out a great album called Autumn Stone.
In earlier days I heard songs like Springtime in the Rockies and Here Comes Summer and two of my favourite singles (kids ask your parents what a single was) were by the Beatles and Dragon and both titled Rain.
So many songs about wind and clouds and sunshine and such things.
Without weather our musical landscape would be a desert.
Right then.
If insomnia comes-a-calling (maybe due to humidity or whistling winds in the wires) then dig out your own list of weather-inspired songs…or take the literary path like Mr Shakespeare did with Midsummer Night's Dream and A Winter's Tale.
I can assure you, by 6.28am you will still be conscious but the pad you have used to note things down on will be…flooded.
- Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist and observer of the slightly off-centre.
