September has officially stopped pretending.
One minute you’re still in summer dresses “just in case,” and the next you’re hunting for jumpers that mysteriously vanished in May and now smell faintly of cupboard.
This week was peak autumn mum energy.
Jumpers. Nursery colds. Podcast tabs. And me standing in the kitchen at 7:12am wondering why every single shoe in this house has a twin living somewhere else.
It started with the weather doing that very British thing where it looks sunny from indoors and feels like a fridge the second you open the front door.
Cue the morning negotiation.
Coat on. Coat off. Coat on again. Indie deciding she is personally offended by sleeves. The other one treating breakfast like a hostage situation. Me gripping a coffee like it’s a support animal.
John appeared, found the missing shoe (again), and somehow still left the house looking like a person who owns a hairbrush.
I left looking like I’d lost a fight with a scarf.
Then came the nursery cold.
Not a dramatic one. Just that gentle, relentless, slightly green life form that arrives via a child’s sleeve and immediately books a two-week residency in the entire household.
Tissue boxes became interior design. Calpol became a calendar invite. Sleep became… optional.
And yet somehow I still tried to run Storme Diaries like a functioning adult.
Editing with a blocked nose. Replying to messages between snot-wipes. Recording voice notes that sounded like I’d swallowed a frog and then pretending that was “texture.”
There is a very glamorous version of “autumn reset” on Instagram.
Candles. Planners. New notebooks. A woman smiling gently next to a latte as if her children have never wiped a nose on her shoulder.
My autumn reset looked like this: washing on the radiator, a half-finished shopping list, three open podcast drafts, and me eating toast over the sink because sitting down felt ambitious.
But midweek I had one of those tiny good days that keep you going.
A guest conversation that reminded me why I started this in the first place. The kind where you finish recording, look at the timeline, and think — oh. People are going to feel that.
Then straight back into the chaos carousel: nursery bags, dinner that was almost a vegetable, bedtime stories with a voice that had no business doing character voices.
John made a cuppa at one point, looked at the pile of jumpers on the chair, and said something optimistic about “getting into a rhythm now the seasons have changed.”
I nodded.
Then sneezed so hard I dropped a sock in the tea.
Rhythm.
By the weekend I was ready for something soft.
Not a spa day. Just Essex autumn — a proper walk, cheeks cold, kids running ahead like they’ve been wound up with a key, me remembering that fresh air is free and occasionally helpful.
We came home muddy, starving, and weirdly proud of ourselves for leaving the house twice in one day.
So that was my week.
Jumpers. Nursery germs. Podcast piles. Cold coffee. Warm soup. A partner who still finds the shoe. Kids who still find the tissues first. Me somewhere in the middle, holding autumn together with dry shampoo and mild delusion.
And honestly?
I’ll take it.
Because this is the season of soft chaos — and I’m learning to stop waiting for the perfect reset before I call it living.
Here’s to jumpers, tissues, and autumn plans that survive about twelve minutes. 🍂🤍