October comes

Too soon, too soon

When I boarded this train, it was still entirely dark. Once again and without fair warning, daylight is regaining preciousness.

In the season’s defence, I did arrive at the station before most commuters. Wanting to steal some of this long journey from a part of my day that I might otherwise have wasted – and to avoid the rocketing price of peak-time tickets – I booked a very early train.

As we slide south, the gloom slowly dissolves into grey fog and silvery fields. All is scalped and stubbled by the harvest, the land hunkering down (too soon, to soon) for an empty winter’s pause. By the time I have finished my coffee and my book, mist has gathered into rain, and I’m looking forward to the week ahead.

I went away for one short week in early September, and when I returned the trees along the river banks were starting to rust. Gusts of wind were picking leaves from branches. Autumn had arrived while I was gone.

I think everyone can agree – in the chilly North at least – that the turn of this year has arrived before it is welcome. It makes me squirm to see all these auburn-tinted Instagram posts and Youtube videos, heralding the ‘cosy season’; of over-sweetened coffees and sickly-smelling candles. Don’t wish away the summer! I think. Don’t jump too soon onto the next thing. Enjoy what we have while it’s still here. Autumn will come – and with it so will those dark mornings.

Don’t get me wrong – I love autumn. I love the return of its nostalgic smells, the noticeable change in the air when you leave the house. The reminder of the rituals you did miss: hot soup and thick socks. Cool enough for that favourite jacket, but not so cold that you need your plumpest, most practical resort.

We used to sing my favourite school hymn in assembly at this time of year. It was so different from the others: it captured a season, and a feeling, like the best kind of poetry.

Autumn days when the grass is jewelled

And there’s silk inside a chestnut shell

Jet planes meeting in the air to be refuelled

All the things I love so well…

And of course the colours. Autumn comes and goes as quickly as its flaming leaves, which is a good part of its charm. There’s no chance for the novelty to wear off, as it does in winter. Though this does mean that your favourite jacket – the one you bought for spring and autumn – seldom gets the outings you hope it will.

The Met Office app on my phone gets a lot of use at this kind of transitionary time, and talk of the weather reaches an arguable climax. One day we’re soaking up the sun’s warmth on our faces, exchanging warning comments like ‘this’ll be it’ or ‘enjoy it while it lasts!’ The next we’re turning the dial round in the cold car.

Our heating rumbled into life one afternoon a number of weeks ago, prompted automatically by our thermostat. We were outraged.

There’s no way we should need the heating on this early!

In September!

CAN YOU IMAGINE!

So of course we turned it off and put a woollen blanket on the bed.  

All this to say: autumn is a time of change, and though it happens every year (every day, in fact) this kind of obvious change to our environment, familiar and jarring, never fails to bring out our curious habit of both loving and resisting change in equal measures. At least, that’s how it seems to me. Beloved jumpers retrieved from the back of drawers, and conversations filled with lament for the swift summer gone.

My little trip away a few weeks ago was to the new writer’s cabin near Machynlleth, hosted by the excellent Julia Forster. Right in the midst of back-to-school mania, what I needed to do was get back to writing. After a summer of welcome disruption, and with a new chapter arriving in October, September was my window of opportunity to sit down and focus on my own stuff. So I took myself off to the green velvet hills of Wales, and sank into a glorious few days of creative focus. I came back down to earth, and to the page. You can read more about my escape in this month’s essay, which is a bit of an ode to the idea of the creative retreat. No matter the scale of the act, moving yourself out of the usual space, with the specific intention to think and create, is nothing short of powerful.

The mornings were chilly, spent wrapped in a blanket on the cabin’s porch, chain-drinking hot cups of strong coffee. The evenings were colourful and glorious, casting a new kind of light across the valley each time. On the last day, we had an unexpected warm spell: a hazy heat which beckoned me to the beach and into the sea I had been reading and writing about all week.

Since arriving home, the weekly veg box has been full of carrots and onions, the river has flooded (again, too soon) and the summer clothes still in my laundry pile are officially out of commission for the year. It was a last hoorah, but a beautiful one.

A fresh start at the fall of the year

So what’s this big new chapter coming? If you follow me on social media, you might have seen that earlier this month, I announced the formation of a new literary magazine – Folding Rock – of which I am co-founder and co-editor along with the excellent Rob Harries. All summer we have been plotting behind the scenes, and now we are so pleased to finally share the news that, thanks to landmark funding awarded to our venture by the Books Council of Wales, Folding Rock will be publishing its first issue in March 2025.

And my journey south this morning is for exactly that reason: our first few days ‘officially’ in operation. We’re spending some time at Barry Tramshed Tech – our super-cool partners-in-crime – to get down to business. We’ve done the job of winning the financial support we need to make this kind of wild vision a reality, but now the hard work really starts. Folding Rock is dedicated to brilliant writing in and from Wales, and is going to be much more than a magazine. We want it to be a pipeline for the best new talent, a centre of gravity for a growing creative community, and something that writers and readers can be really, properly proud of.

You can read more about our grand plans at foldingrock.com – and sign up to the newsletter to get all the updates when they come. You can find us on socials too @foldingrockmag. News about submissions, subscription special offers, and our first issue and events, will be along very soon…

You might have also seen another kind of launch on my social media this month. As promised, I released the first introductory episode to my podcast last week. Like the magazine, This Place is a project that has been plugging away behind the scenes all summer, with excursions to all sorts of lovely places, chatting to fascinating people about the landscapes that have shaped them. In fact, this podcast was seeded back when I was writing my essay collection, Seaglass, and I’m so excited to finally be sharing the first fruits of that slow labour with you.

You can now listen to the Prologue episode – a quiet morning stroll with me along the River Ouse – to hear more about how This Place came about. If you’re subscribed to Dwell then you’ll be the first to know when episodes land each month (along with a little extra note from me), but you can find it in all the usual apps too.

For paid subscribers, I’ll be sharing occasional bonus nature tracks: simple, curated tapes of carefully recorded sounds, from rainfall to ocean waves. Each one will be accompanied by a written description of the recording location, so you can really transport yourself to somewhere peaceful. Keep an eye out for those if this sounds like your thing!

In other news this month, I had a wonderful time at Collected Books, chairing the brilliant Joanna Scutts last week. Out of the truly horrid wind and rain, we chatted about her new collection of essays, Firebrands: ‘25 Pioneering Women Writers to Ignite Your Reading Life’. The discussion was fascinating, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to challenge their habitual bookshelf a little – or just be inspired by a bunch of remarkable women. They were always there, they were always writing: we just weren’t always told about them.

Along with Firebrands, I’ve read a rather a few good books lately. Including physicist Helen Czerski’s Blue Machine; an incredibly insightful biography of our global ocean, which I filled with pencil marks and post-its, and which has since been awarded the Wainwright Prize for Writing on Conservation. Thoroughly deserved.

I also made the long-overdue journey through Robin Wall Kimmerer’s famous ‘hymn of love to the world’, Braiding Sweetgrass. The best word I can use for this book is abundant. It is overflowing with knowledge and reflection – nourishing, I think, regardless of what you believe or how you live. And if you can find a way to listen to the audiobook (try your library’s digital collection) Robin reads it herself beautifully, too.

October is the turning over of a new leaf – but there are good habits that I’ve regained in this back-to-school month of September that I am determined to take with me as the calendar gathers speed. My morning walks, whatever the weather. A reading session a day. Regular time set aside to write. The weeks ahead are going to be exciting, but change can be a little dizzying, and I think these things will keep me steady. I’m making the most of my time in South Wales this week, but next week it will be Durham Book Festival (with my author hat on), followed by Frankfurt Book Fair (with my editor hat on) the week after that.

In the meantime, I do hope you enjoy my introduction to the new podcast. Listen out for some lovely music, made especially for This Place by the very talented Danny Booth, featuring strings and melody by my clever big brother. I’m so grateful to all the kind people who have shared their special places and helped bring this audio idea to life – it wouldn’t exist otherwise. If you do listen to the prologue, let me know what you think! And I look forward to sharing the first full episode with you in a few weeks’ time.

Till then: wrap up, step out, and enjoy the blazing colours of October.

KT x