If I had to put a name to it, I'd guess many of us are feeling a little 'finifugal' right now. This rare beauty from the dictionary describes the wish that something didn't have to end, from your favourite box set to a book that is just too good to finish.
Right now, we might be feeling a little finifugal about one thing in particular: the slipping away of the summer and the speedy march towards school drop-offs, packed lunches and heating bills. In France, the start of September even has its own word. Say hello to 'La Rentree', 'The Return'.
The French take their summer break very seriously, when every garçon and his chien head off on their hols. September brings it all crashing down, and 'La Rentree' involves the collective return of students, office workers and tanned politicians to normal life, albeit with a wistful sense of what they are leaving behind.
For the past three decades I've been collecting words for the feelings and events that come with particular times of year, gathering them together for my book, Words For Life.
So many of them are seasonal. From the need for endless cups of tea in the dark days of January (making you a 'theic', wonderfully described in the historical dictionary as a 'tea drunkard'), to the Christmas 'bummock' (copious amounts of booze), there is a lost vocabulary just waiting to express our lives as we move through the year. And as we begin to leave summer behind, it's well worth going on a 'gadwaddick' (old Norfolk speak for a merry jaunt) through our forgotten lexicon of this time of year.
