It’s getting earlier every year, that first meme about golden leaves and pumpkin-spiced lattes. This year, I swear, I spotted one in early August, while we were still sweltering under our fourth heatwave of the summer.

Because, of course, for those that like crisp mornings, Halloween and glasses of red wine in front of roaring fires, the arrival of autumn brings with it something else: the incessant need to tell everyone just how much they love this perfectly pleasant, if perpetually damp, season.

I call it Big Autumn. The idea that liking autumn is enough to sustain an entire personality. I don’t know when it first happened but my instinct is that it’s been driven by an almost entirely brown-and-orange aesthetic pushed out via Pinterest and Instagram, and not by the often grim........

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