Containing the most muted and toned-down of the Summer family’s colours, individuals who fall into the Soft Autumn category may very easily be mistaken for Soft Summers. Both colour seasons are very similar, and the distinctions are subtle. Interwoven into these everyday, sometimes downright mundane, routines of life, is a very vivid, very intriguing image of Japan and Japanese society. Sometimes, occasionally, it reads a little like the travelogues Pico Iyer is so known for: the descriptions of the maples, aflame with fall foliage. The cars lined up while tourists throng by the thousands to view the leaves. The shrines, the stone lanterns, the persimmons. It’s within these games that we see best how aging — especially in a country where the population skews so strongly in the plus-65 category that “more diapers are sold to the elderly (in Japan) than to babies,” Iyer notes — is a rhythmic daily battle of impermanence. Each player offers a unique navigation through these comes-to-all autumn years; and how clever of Iyer to make their commotions a metaphor for how the world paddles forward. October is a high point in the year for the city’s film lovers. It marks the arrival of the BFI London Film Festival. And, a bit later this autumn, you’ll find Christmas light trails opening all over the UK. 7. Let loose at an adventure playground

Like autumn days, his pen moves slowly, capturing the elements of a culture which worships its dead and holds onto the familial in face of everything.Though they’re beautiful at any time of year, autumn is when they really shine – think crumbling stone and winding walkways sheltering under and covered by a golden carpet of leaves.

Of course you can do this anywhere where light pollution is low. But the very best spots are England’s remote National Parks. If you have water babies too then always go prepared with a towel and a change of clothes. I’d also recommend a flask of something hot and a wet suit! John Keats' 1820 ode to the fall season is one of the great classics of the poetic movement of Romanticism. The poem is a rich description of the beautyof autumn that focuses on both its lush and sensual fruitfulness and the melancholy hint of shorter days. Keats ends his poem evoking the closing of the season and finding a parallel in the beauty of an early-evening sunset. His words depict the haunting beauty in the quiet winding down into winter.We often notice the nights begin to draw in from this point as after the autumn equinox, the nights are longer than the days, until this is reversed at the spring equinox. 6. A date for your diary - 24 September 2303 At one point, fairly early in Autumn Light, Iyer writes: ‘ We cherish things, Japan has always known, precisely because they cannot last; it’s their frailty that adds sweetness to their beauty… Beauty, the foremost Jungian in Japan has observed, “is completed only if we accept the fact of death.” Autumn poses the question we all have to live with: How to hold on to the things we love even though we know that we and they are dying. How to see the world as it is, yet find light within that truth.’ Another option is to pair a darker neutral with a lighter, richer accent colour, such as a medium brown with a mustard yellow. Similarly, you can pair lighter neutrals with rich, darker accent colours. The book, as the title says, is about Autumn and the autumns in life. About the natural periods of change in life and how they are met and change, as they do, over time. It’s about family. It’s about Japan and where he lives and his love of it. And his love for his wife. It’s about their day to day living. Nothing special and yet there is a sense of a deep natural beauty in the moments of it, that make it special. PI seems present for it all. And he sees it all in such a matter of fact way that both accepts and appreciates the mundane and universal nature of things and the absurd and whimsy. And also the feelings that arise within it. My girls start talking about Halloween in about May – nearly as early as Christmas! This, and October half term, is the highlight of their autumn.