But the reality of this deceitful season is often more depressing than you actually remember. Those crunchy leaves? They go slimy and slippery in the rain. Hot drinks? They burn your tongue and leave you wincing for hours. Cosy jumpers? They soon feel scratchy and constricting.
After the fun of summer, with its warm weather and endless nights, autumn never quite meets our expectations – and the crisp and clear autumn images on Google never quite match up to the drizzly and cold days we’re actually faced with.
Here are just a few reasons why autumn is one giant let down…
1. You always get caught outside without an umbrella
No matter how prepared you think you are, there’s always an autumn day where you forget your umbrella and the heavens open. Usually, it’s when you’re on your way to an important event, like a wedding or a business meeting, leaving you with frizzy hair and destroyed make-up.
2. You can never dress for the weather
Speaking of the weather, you never seem to know what’s going on with the temperature in autumn. The forecast warns of chilly winds, so you pile on a thick jumper and woolly tights. But as soon as you start running for the bus, you’re dripping in sweat and scrambling to take off your layers. The struggle is real.
3. Everything suddenly tastes like pumpkin spiced latte
If you’re the type of person that likes the taste of hot cinnamon in everything you eat, then autumn is a dream come true. If you don’t though, it’s a living nightmare. Pumpkin spice lattes are so ubiquitous with autumn that it is now an acronym – PSL – and it’s basically unavoidable.
4. Slipping on wet leaves
Nothing feels more embarrassing than slipping on a wet leaf and crashing onto the ground in front of a bunch of random strangers. As a fully grown adult, you feel like you should be beyond falling over by now – but wet leaves are a major hazard that will always catch you off guard.
5. Halloween means scrambling around for a last-minute costume
Although you spend the year feeling super-hyped about Halloween, the reality is often a lot more stressful than you remember. You’re never organised enough with your costume, which means you inevitably spend the night before cursing over a needle and thread, as you try to turn a tatty old bed sheet into something vaguely spooky, or reluctantly traipsing around a tacky costume shop picking up whatever is still in stock.
6. Your summer tan has faded
No matter how much moisturiser you slap onto your skin, your glorious summer tan soon fades into the past – leaving you with a dull complexion, and a serious case of post-holiday blues.
7. The nights get darker
As you get closer to winter, morning workouts suddenly get a lot harder, because it’s pitch black when your alarm goes off. That incredible summer body you worked hard to hone soon becomes but a memory.
The darker evenings also put an end to spontaneous park drinks with friends. In fact, you never make plans with anyone, because the bleak evenings make you want to rush back home to your duvet.
8. The year feels like it’s really speeding up
You swear it was March just last week, but now it’s autumn, which means Christmas is around the corner and the year is almost finished. You wouldn’t mind time flying by if you’d had fun, but because of the pandemic, nothing majorly exciting has really happened and you feel like you’ve lost an entire year of your life to Netflix.
9. Summer feels really far away
Although time might feel like it’s escaping you, somehow, next summer still feels like it’s light years away. You can’t wait to enjoy a Pina Colada on a sun-lounger again, but the countdown to better weather is now depressingly long.
Add to this the fact house spiders make their unwelcome return, the school term starts again and there are no Bank Holidays for months, and it soon becomes clear why autumn is the worst season of all. Let’s hope the bad weather and annoyingly crisp leaves don’t last too long.
