Falling into fall, springing into Christmas

As a northern hemispheric country, just as in the U.S., summer's heat wears away and leaves change color as fall arrives in the U.K. In my years abroad I've learned how memories of time and place attach to seasons, with seasons becoming markers on the timeline. Your perception of seasonal change is shaped by where you've spent most of your years, especially where you grew up. Shaped by the American Midwest, the autumnal months remind me of baseball season's end, football season's start, school terms commencing, green leaves becoming red and orange, Thanksgiving, and Christmas shopping.

We find some parallels between the U.S. and London. Fall brings cooler temperatures, although summers are never as hot and winters never as cold here as we'd get in Iowa. This year, fall brought Christine's return to school, this time at the London School of Economics, alma mater of Mick Jagger and JFK, both of whom didn't earn degrees there (hopefully Christine will better their records!). She's studying sociology.

August is European vacation season, and my work was noticeably slower, with client engagements picking up steam in September with a big push to finish as much as possible before Christmas.

Sports are seasonal. Our favorite fall sport, American football, is a stranger in these parts; however, the NFL is investing a lot of money here, so, now, more people have heard of the sport even if few still watch or understand. No, here, football -- English football -- is everything. At the end of August, the English Premier League, the top English football league and one of the world's most valuable sporting leagues, starts back up. Living in north London, we've been following our local team, Arsenal. Hopes are high this season for the Gunners (pronounced gooners), with their new coach, to return to form as a top team; so far, their heads are barely above the tide where the top teams float. Whatever the case, watching football/soccer is fun because it's 90 minutes of play with few interruptions. You don't learn near as much about consumer advertising as you do while watching American football.

Holidays are always tied to seasons, but the holidays you know are tied to the place you know best, as I have noted before. Thanksgiving isn't a holiday of any note in the UK -- other than British people commenting, often with curiosity and bemusement, on the holiday's existence on the other side of the Atlantic. While Americans know turkey as a Thanksgiving bird; it is a Christmas bird here. The American Halloween tradition -- for kids, begging for candy and dressing like your favorite non-human character; for the 16-25 crowd, getting drunk and wearing provocative costumes -- isn't the British tradition, but every year, I am told, Brits are celebrating a more and more American-style Halloween. It seems that the consumer allure of our holidays just can't be stopped.

There is a peculiar British holiday of note that comes every fall, though we don't get time off work for it: that is Firework Night, also called Guy Fawkes Night. Supposedly the night commemorates a pre-modern terrorist's failed bombing of the House of Lords. It seems now to mostly commemorate the ease of procuring fireworks in the U.K. Our apartment, north of the city center, has windows offering a panoramic view of the southwestern sky; during the weeks leading up to Firework Night and the night itself, we saw surprisingly large amateur displays (using much larger fireworks than we can buy in Wisconsin and Missouri for Independence Day) as well as some professional shows near Waterloo, at Canary Wharf, and from the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Bobby developed a love of fireworks during those weeks, and once the fireworks stopped after 5 Nov (Guy Fawkes Night), he was looking out the window wishing aloud for feye-ah wuhk).

Brexit is not seasonal, but we can recall the fall of 2018 as a nadir of the Brexit absurdist comedy. The Brexit question was put to a vote (back in 2016) as a stunt whose consequences were not thought through. Many political miscalculations followed, reaching a dramatic crescendo before Christmas with Parliament, staggering through the dark, unable to agree on anything except to not fire the Prime Minister. With Parliament refusing to accept the Brexit deal agreed between the Prime Minister and the E.U., and with the exit scheduled by law to be 29 March 2019, fans of absurdist comedy have a lot to look forward to in the new year. For those of us who need to convert dollars into sterling, November and December were great months (with bad Brexit news always causing the dollar to rise against the pound). The real tragedy of Brexit is that so many Neapolitan pizza chefs will lose their automatic right to work in the U.K.

Brexit or no, we don't look forward to the winter. Our experience last winter was cold and damp in dim light, with sunsets at 4pm. Rarely cold enough to snow, but cold enough that you'd prefer to not be trudging through light rain on wet streets. Bobby caught several colds, and Mum and Baba traded them back and forth with him.

And now, every fall we get to celebrate a new holiday: Bobby's birthday. This year, his nainai came to celebrate with him. Next year, he will be back in the U.S., maybe bringing back his love of football with him for his own seasonal tradition. Back in the U.S., when the weather cools and the leaves transform, will he be reminded of those autumnal days in London playing in the parks and watching fireworks through his windows?

Scootering into fall, cutting through the St. Mary Magdalene Garden near our house, the boy is seasonally prepared with his baseball cap and hoodie.

Back at St. Mary Magdalene Garden, this time with his best friend.

A couple of young Islingtonians (Bobby and his best friend) taking a little rest during an intense morning of playing at Highbury Fields.

Enjoying a babycino (foamed milk with chocolate powder sprinkled on top) at the coffee shop in the plaza in front of our apartment building. Bobby prefers to always have some cars nearby: on the left is his beloved Gugu car and on the right is Lambo, which he picked up during our trip to Rome.

Bobby's first Halloween costume was a locomotive, created by his mum.

On Guy Fawkes night, marveling at the fireworks, his favorite hobby from the fall.

Mum had to study on the weekends, so on several weekends, the boy and his dad went into London looking for adventure. On this Saturday, we played at the Regent's Park; ate pizza at the London branch of the famous Neapolitan pizzeria, L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele (I'm embarrassed to say that the one in Naples hosted Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Etc.); and the boy slept in the Ergo Baby while Baba did some Christmas shopping at Daunt Books, the cloyingly Instagrammable bookstore for travelers.

Mum came home from school early to prepare this fabulous Thanksgiving feast for her family. That's a chicken in the roaster, with turkeys not generally being available until closer to Christmas without a special order (like I did last year)

No further caption required. But note that Bobby did immediately recognize the car as a gugu car. Excitement abounds when he spots gugu cars around Islington.

The boy opens an early Christmas present, a book of famous train journeys, that secretly may be for his Baba as much as for him. We're going all-in on transport-themed tourism. In this photo he's exclaiming taihn!

After performing in the Christmas concert at his nursery, Bobby had his first visit with Santa. The look on his face was similar to the look he maintained during the concert, apparently stricken with stage fright, although luckily he didn't have a solo part.

This year, the boy developed a charming fascination with Christmas trees (as he says, in three distinct words, khiss mus tee). We took one of our Saturday adventures to Trafalgar Square, where we saw the huge Christmas tree that every year is gifted by Norway to Britain in thanks for her WWII efforts. Bobby was fascinated by the square with all of its activity: buses and cars driving around, fountains with statues of fish, street performers, cranes nearby. We stopped into the National Gallery to look at some paintings and pick up some Christmas gifts in the shop. You can see him going nuts for those Christmas trees inside. We also went to have lunch at another Neapolitan pizza outlet: 50 Kalo di Ciro Salvo.

In late November, staring at train videos and contemplating -- maybe thinking of the year gone by, or maybe just admiring how the train always follows the train track. The similes of taking trains into the new year just write themselves. Speaking of cloying...