Sunny Septembers seem nothing but a distant memory…

Have Septembers gone rogue although possibly not in the way anticipated by the doomsters proclaiming terminal global warming and the end of civilisation as we know it.

Back in the day – I’m talking 70s and 80s – I recall sweating buckets in those heavy old rugby jerseys on summery September afternoons.

You would finish the game weighed down by the sweat laden jersey with your nose and ears sunburnt raw and your torso scratchy with a heat rash.

As a family we also used to delay our holiday until the first ten days of September when not only were the prices down but even the British weather seemed set fair.

At our cricket club – Copthorne – September always seemed the best weather and we traditionally batted on until the first weekend of October when Crockham Hill were always our final opponents.

Rugby grounds in September, October and even into November used to be baked concrete hard.

You would come off games with knees scraped raw by trying to make tackles on such grounds and the most common way of getting concussed was to make a low textbook tackle only to crack your head on the flinty playing surface as you fell to ground.

Later, when reporting, it was a miserably poor autumn if I had to discard shorts much before my birthday on October 16 but nowadays autumn seems to come in hard and cold from early September. Very odd. I will of course now be cancelled for daring to write this but c’est la vie.