In 2022, I posted about some minor, rather disconcerting but also quite amusing, incidents at the time of the autumn equinox that involved two rather weird women I encountered when I went out shopping while feeling under the weather.
In 2023, I described a few more small incidents that happened at the same time of year. I also said this:
“It is possible that creating last year's article had the effect of reducing the negative effects of this year's autumn equinox; it will be interesting to see what, if anything, happens this time next year.”
For the next two years, I didn't go out much or make any special journeys around this key time. I stayed in and did a lot of work online instead.
This year, I decided to go out and see what, if anything, unusual happened. I hoped that this time, awareness, processing the previous happenings, getting it all down in writing and learning from experience would help me to get ahead of the game and prevent any more unwelcome incidents.
How wrong I was!
Once more, there were some minor incidents, and they happened over several days.
Two days before the autumn equinox, I made a special bus journey to revisit a place with rather sad associations from the past. I had been back there twice before in recent years, but this time I got confused and couldn't remember which way to go. I decided to go home, check the map and try again some other time. (I haven't got a smartphone.)
When I was on the bus going home, I suddenly remembered where the road I wanted to visit was and that I had brought a little map with me just in case!
I had waited a long time for a bus, then I decided to cut my losses and get a different bus from another stop – where I also had to wait a long time. An elderly gentleman got on and caused a long delay because he didn't seem to know exactly where he was or where he wanted to go! Some of the passengers tried to help: they asked him questions and told him where various places he mentioned were.
When I got home, I found that I couldn't connect to the Internet! I can't remember when this last happened. After one and a half very stressful hours, the problem fixed itself.
The above-mentioned bus journey acted as a trial run. I had also planned to take a long scenic bus ride on the day of the Equinox to somewhere I hadn't visited for a long time, but after what happened the first time I decided that it would be asking for trouble.
Not only that, on the day after the fruitless bus trip I had some unexpected and uninvited visitors in the form of workmen who were trying to trace the source of a problem elsewhere in my block. Such sudden invasions are one of my least favourite things.
I wasn't sure if and when they might want to return, so I stayed in for a few more days. I felt depressed and I no longer had any inclination to go anywhere - even to see a good display of autumn leaves.
So that's it for this year.
I wonder what next year's autumn equinox will bring. Maybe staying at home for a few days is the best option after all.
London's Green Park in autumn:
