Summer's end

That's that. Friday afternoon in Warsaw, daytime high 28C. By Saturday morning, the temperature had plunged to 13C. Cloudless skies turned overcast, the odd spittle of rain. Sunday - colder. Next week, temperatures will struggle to get much above 10C. Summer's over, but what a summer it was. From early April onward, a long cavalcade of hot days with clear blue skies, over London (!) as well as Warsaw. A magnificent summer heady with the smell of ripening fruit - indeed, the smell of it was all-pervasive and those fruity aromas - volatile organic compounds like ethylene - everywhere I turned. Raspberries, cherries, blackberries, plums, grapes, mirabelles, pears, apples. I could even smell them in my coffee tin, full of fresh Lavazza.

Musically for me, as since adolescence, the music of summer is early Pink Floyd, pre-Dark Side of the Moon. Autumn and winter were the seasons for Roxy Music, but summer, those Floyd songs capture the atmosphere, kicking off with Grantchester Meadows, which I traditionally listen to whenever I hear the first fly of summer buzzing around my study. This year has reunited me with songs from the (less often played) B-side of Atom Heart Mother and the studio LP of Ummagumma; in particular Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast (Pts 1-3) and The Narrow Way (Pt 3). Old favourites - Careful With That Axe, Eugene, Echoes and the entire Atom Heart Mother suite were also frequently listened to - plus the very earliest Syd Barrett  compositions off The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. And many tunes from A Saucerful of Secrets. I still stand by my youthful assertion that Floyd went downhill after Dark Side of the Moon. For me, anyway. De gustibus non disputandum est.

Below: before summer ended - last week in Kraków. Early evening, temperatures still around 30C. The essence of European elegance. Rather than go my usual route from the station to Kazimierz, via Planty and Starowiślna, I took the direct route via back streets and discovered a whole new Kraków, but more on that next time I'm there. In the meanwhile, the splendour of ul. Lubicz at twilight.

Left: architecturally more Vienna than Warsaw; this bit of ul. Lubicz with its stone-lined underpass (over which runs the main railway line south), wrought-iron footbridge, decorative street lights and uplit facades create a magnificent atmosphere on a hot late-summer's evening. Below: the Hotel Europejski. When opened in 1884, only one of the three floors was for guests - the rest of the building was for their servants and hotel staff.

As the world tips through equinox, we here in the Northern Hemisphere move from summer to winter, the darkness and the cold await us - but then in six months' time, hopefully, another equinox and another balmy summer to look forward to, positive thoughts to keep us going through the dark months.

This time last year:
In which I lose a lot of data from my old laptop

This time two years ago:
Konin - town of aluminium, electricity and coal

This time five years ago:
Car-free day falls on a Sunday

This time six years ago:
Vistula at record low level

This time nine years ago:
Car-free day? Warsaw's roads busier than ever

This time ten years ago:
The shape of equinox

This time 11 years ago:
Potato harvest time in Jeziorki