Autumn Glory

We are entering November and its chill winds, but it has been a great summer and a wonderful autumn. Even my grapes have ripened, and on the North East coast this is rather good. The colours have enchanted me, and they have reminded me of a lamp which was in my grandparents’ house near Villemur. It stood just outside my grandmother’s bedroom. It was a lifetime ago, I was a child, but I remember an arrangement of leaves and bunches of grapes made of translucent glass, possibly 1920s, and the soft light shining through them. The house was beautiful, if formal and somehow severe. At night we would go upstairs by the wooden servants staircase, leaving the warmth of the Aga and the glow of polished copper pots in the kitchen. Upstairs were long corridors, tall and dark. Most of the bedrooms were usually empty, a bit sad in their grand but slightly faded loveliness. The Empire bedroom was impressive with its gold ornamentation, but I liked the Blue bedroom, its soft tones, the bed in the alcove and the long curtains you could draw across it. In the darkness at the top of the stairs, between the light from below and the safe haven of the bedroom, there stood the soft glow of glass grapes.

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