YOU don’t have to be a poet to wax lyrical about the many simple pleasures that autumn — the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness — brings.

The end of British Summer Time should not be a lament back to long warm, sunny days or a dread of lengthening dark nights. For a few weeks at least we can enjoy lighter mornings and the promise of glorious sunrises and angry sunsets. Continuing to look on the bright side, there are just a little more than seven weeks to the shortest day, four more days after that to Christmas, and, lo and behold, before we know it we’ll be celebrating Hogmanay.

All right, easy said. If the scaremongering national tabloids are to be believed, we shall have to endure a mini Ice Age, survive an influenza pandemic and get through the worst economic crash in the history of capitalism before the return of spring. The UK media may be doing its best to talk us into a recession such as there has never been before, but let’s try to get things into perspective. Of course everyone is concerned about his or her savings, pensions and jobs. But do news reports have to be quite so alarming?

At the very time when we should be showing that fighting British bulldog spirit and doing our best to stop the world’s economies sinking deep into recession, there are, after all, more than the pension funds and obscene bonuses of billionaire financiers to consider. It is the livelihoods of the ordinary man and woman that are most at risk. Come on, guys, it’s not all gloom and doom — give those reports some positive spin and stop looking for the bad news. By instilling a degree of confidence in the markets, they might just begin to pick up.

If there’s a song that never fails to cheer me up, it’s the one performed in the closing credits of Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’. The cast may all be bizarrely and hopelessly hanging from crosses, but are they despondent? Certainly not. They are singing: ‘Some things in life are bad . . . they can really make you mad . . . Other things just make you swear and curse, . . . when you’re chewing on life’s gristle, don’t grumble, give a whistle, and this’ll help things turn out for the best.’

There is plenty to raise our spirits as winter draws near. Autumn brings the bounty of the harvest, and as we bid farewell to salads and summer fruits we look forward to fresh winter vegetables, roast dinners and hearty bowls of homemade soups. As the eccentric TV chef and the champion of oppressed battery chickens, Hugh Double-Barrell, said last week as he extolled the delights of winter veg: ‘Consider my cockles warmed.’

It was not the changing of the clocks, nor the wet, cold Sunday last, spent by a warm log-burning stove that made me realise winter was on its way. Nor was it the shock a fortnight before of walking into the Jersey branch of a high-street chain to see its halls bedecked with vulgar tinsel Christmas decorations far too early for considered taste. I quickly exited, swearing not to return until December.

I knew winter was a-coming last Friday as the familiar smell of apples and woodsmoke wafted from The Elms across the still parish of St Mary. Inside the snug press-house, a veritable United Nations of voluntary peelers — Islanders and visitors of many nationalities — assembled for the Jersey tradition of black butter-making. And, befitting such a gathering, an accordion was playing with gusto.

As the mixture bubbled in the bachîn hour after hour, day and night, stirred patiently by descendants of Jerseymen who had done the same thing in ages past, time stood still. The bonhomie and banter was fuelled by an endless supply of cider, generous servings of beancrock and apple pies, devoured eagerly by peelers with sore fingers and stirrers with aching arms.

It was a revival of a Jersey way of life long gone, forgotten by most, and unknown to the financial whizzkids and incomers who have made the Island rich — and their own fortunes — and who now face an uncertain future.

The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness is also the time when we remember casualties of a different kind from those being suffered in the world of high finance.

While summer flowers fade and die there is one that shines forth just as it did among the hell of the Western Front nine decades ago. The little red poppy, a symbol of hope, of a brighter life to come for the men who fought in the First World War, is worn with pride as we pay due respect not just to those long gone who died or were maimed on the fields of Flanders. We also remember the extraordinary generation that rose to the challenge to defeat the forces of Nazism in the Second World War and all who have fought — and continued to put their lives on the line — in the many theatres of war since then.

Wearing a poppy with pride is not a glorification of war. No country and no soldier, sailor or airman wants to wage war for war’s sake. It is a last resort when diplomacy fails or when an aggressor threatens another nation, our hard-won rights and freedoms or seeks to annihilate a belief system or a culture. The freedoms we enjoy today came about because ordinary people were willing to make extraordinary sacrifices when faced with exceptional circumstances.

We may be living in uncertain times as the world stock markets tumble, inflation soars and economies contract, but compared to the trials and tribulations overcome by the generations that fought in or endured two world wars, things could be far worse.

It is man’s ability to look on the bright side that has kept the human race going, no matter how tough the circumstances or seemingly insurmountable the hurdles. Stock markets and economies may crash and fortunes be lost, but they will rise again.

Just remember Monty Python’s advice: ‘If life seems jolly rotten, there’s something you’ve forgotten, and that’s to laugh and smile and dance and sing. When you’re feeling in the dumps, don’t be silly chumps, just purse your lips and whistle, that’s the thing. And always look on the bright side of life.’