If you’re in any doubt about whether we are now enjoying the end of summer or the beginning of autumn, you have two ways to settle the question.
Either you can go to the BBC website here and choose between three contrasting definitions: meteorological, astronomical and phenological.
Or you can go for a wander up Broughton Street and look at the A-board outside the Basement Café.
The north-facing side is now advertising a morbid three-day celebration of Halloween.
The south-facing side seems to be encouraging us to book early for Christmas.
We greatly admire both designs: the work of artist, traveller and cocktail enthusiast Kat Whyte. However, one reader contacted us yesterday to say he found the bleeding skull hideous and rather offensive.
Perhaps he’d prefer Kelly Stewart’s gentler studies of buildings and dogs, currently showing in Concrete Wardrobe.
Stewart makes a distinction between the organic line she uses for drawing animals and the stricter architectural line she uses for buildings. However, in this screenprint of Narcissus (‘Flowers on Broughton Street’), the two seem to merge in a wonderfully fluid celebration, rendered doubly confusing by reflections in the shop window of pretty much the same scene.
[Image top-right by Peter Trimming, Creative Commons.]