I Love Autumn/I Hate Autumn

Well it’s come to that beautiful time, the leaves are falling off the trees, all shades of orange and brown, the smell of bonfires in the air, pumpkins in the shops waiting to be carved, plenty of exciting things to get by in the enjoyable (for me) build up to xmas…

Then there’s the fact that my birthday is in Autumn, October 17th or the 17th of knocked over as I used to say incorrectly as a small boy.

As beautiful as it seems I dread this time of year, it means that I will have to read and hear the annual cynical groans of people who don’t appreciate some or all of the above; “Halloween, american thing, Trick or Treating is begging”, “I went to a shop and they had Christmas music on already”, “They should only sell fireworks on November 5th”, “Xfactor signifies everything that is wrong with society” etc etc.

It’s tiring, I know I go on about Arsenal, and occasionally Apple, but change the bleeding record.

I think some forget what it’s like to be young, wanting to go trick or treating. I mean fair enough if you didn’t, maybe you were brought up that it was begging yourself and you now agree too, maybe you were denied the opportunity but oh my days just let the kids get on with it, you don’t have to answer the door!

Then with the fireworks, blame your parents for coaching you to go to sleep in utter silence, it’s just a few load bangs, not someones burglar alarm going off.

Next it’s the “It’s only August/September/October/Novemeber and xmas stuff is in the shops” moan… Yet this happens every year, NOTHING has changed. In fact last year the decorations in our local town centre went up considerably late last year, but STILL the cynical people (who like to think of themselves as intellectuals) piss & moan on Twitter and the like during their viewing of Question Time, Have I Got News For You & Channel 4 News. I mean I for one like to wait till the decorations are up before I do any shopping, I need it to feel like christmas, but I appreciate some families like to get bits and bobs early. Is it a hipster thing; “everyone loves Christmas, so I will be different and hate it” or is it just a pain in the wallet for some people?

Finally it’s the X Factor, love the show, hate the cynicism it breeds. I can agree that a lot of the acts don’t stick around, but saying it’s everything that is wrong with society is bananas, “oh it’s bad for music blah blah blah”, utter tripe! I mean do you have to have a guitar in your hand to be taken seriously, does being discovered by luck in a london bar warrant you to be taken more seriously than someone who’s been filtered through a talent show, heck what if you took a bunch of ‘popular’ artists such as Kesha & Jason Derulo and stuck them in X Factor, they might not actually win (no disrespect to them). Whilst I agree some of it is down to looks and sometimes they mistreat talented acts, but if these acts were not going to get lucky enough to be discovered in the first place then at least they’ve had a shot, same thing happens to artists found by other means, great acts fade.

We’re almost too british, maybe if we had lower working hours and heated pools in our gardens we’d be less bloody whingey, says me whinging about people whinging.