By Martin Lake

SEASON OF MISTS AND MELLOW FRUITFULNESS. This is how John Keats described the season in his poem, To Autumn. While on a train coming back from a short holiday in Dijon, his words seemed wonderfully apt and accurate. I gazed at mile upon mile of rural France, with little farms, woods and barns, tractors and herds of milk-white cows.

It all seemed very distant from the urban world of Menton, distant and timeless. The trees were heavy with red and yellow leaves and appeared to hover over a land half-hidden in bronze coloured mist. Swallows and starlings swept across the skies, playful yet with such intent determination. I’m still astonished at how they swoop and wheel, turn and dive as if under the command of one great voice.

When I was a child I had a book which, amongst other things, had four pictures depicting every season, with all the doings on the land, in the sky and beneath the earth. How busy nature seemed. It was a revelation to a boy who had spent all his life in London, who had seen lions and tigers, polar bears and penguins, even ridden on a camel, yet never yet seen a real-life cow or lamb or pig. (And what a surprise when I saw my first pig. They were not the smiley little pink, corkscrew tailed creatures of books but very large, self-assured and noisy beasts.)

The picture of autumn in my well-thumbed book had children playing conkers, farmers gathering the harvest, fat sheep with heavy coats, shire-horses pulling ploughs, (yes really, even in the 1950s), and a church with a harvest festival in full swing.

Swallows and starlings flock ready to migrate, clouds scud swiftly across the sky, threatening rain which never falls. Beneath the ground, moles dig labyrinthine tunnels, a badger prepares her sett for winter, tree roots extend questioning fingers and mushrooms sprout faster than Lewis Hamilton in a Grand Prix.

And autumn nowadays? I guess that much of what the picture showed still goes on. Moles and badgers dig, the leaves on the trees turn gold, the birds flock before migrating and, perhaps, some children somewhere still play conkers. Yet my adult eyes too often forget to look for it.

But why get wistful? Autumn now has other pleasures. The grapes being harvested ready for bottling, the languid afternoons, more precious for growing ever shorter, the first tang of cold air in the morning, the sunset glowing pink on the nearby mountains. And then there’s the anticipation of autumn events: BA lunches, fantastic quizzes, drinks in the Vintage, strolls by the sea.

Best if all, perhaps, is the return of many friends from far away places. It’s not only swifts and swallows who migrate, we do too. And it’s a great joy to see familiar faces return to Menton to rekindle, so easily it seems, friendship, fun and great good-spirits. Mellow fruitfulness.