It’s the official end of summer this week. As we slip from February into March, we leave behind long summer evenings, endless meals of salad, sun dresses and trips to the beach. The air has a definite autumn tinge to it now, and I’m getting used to the idea of soon being cold, probably getting a cold, and not eating cold things because it’s too cold to fancy them.

March means a bit more than this though. March is a completely crazy time in Adelaide. We have the Clipsal 500 motor racing this weekend. This entails a whole portion of the city centre being shut down, so cars can race around the streets in a mad frenzy. Traffic is gridlocked throughout the remaining roads, the noise of the race can be heard for miles – like a swarm of bees in an endless loop – and we have big fighter jets flying over our house when the race starts. There are also lots of fat men in ‘Team Holden’ shirts wandering around the city, drinking beer.

Side-by-side with the rev heads is the artistic side of our city. We have the Adelaide Fringe Festival, which means a lot of alternative performers are in town (= circus people, people who are not afraid of heights, and magicians). We have the Adelaide Festival (deep and meaningful theatre and operatic performances, which are really boring, long and super expensive). We have Writers Week, where people get to sit around under trees in a park, listening to authors talk about their books (but not me yet. Still an unknown on the local scene as I am only published overseas. Oh yeah, and I’m not famous). And last, but not least, we have Womadelaide. This is an international music festival held in a big park, so there is a lot of batik clothing, scruffy sandals and vegan/vegetarian food around. Three weeks from now, it will all be over, and the city will be just quiet, little old Adelaide for another year.

So Jane, are you out every night, being entertained, I hear you ask? Well, no. And there are reasons. Firstly, I’ve finished my latest novel, and have sent it off to the publisher. I’m too nervous to be around other writers at the moment, so that’s the Writer’s Week out of the way. Secondly, I am learning aerial hoop (that’s not me in the above picture, still not quite that thin, but that’s a hoop), so I don’t need to go to the Fringe Festival to see other people doing stuff much better than me. As for the Adelaide Festival, well, you’d have to pay me to go and see anything in that Festival, and I hate public loos, so Womadelaide is out of the question. Lastly, I can hear the Clipsal 500 from my house, and I can see it on TV, so I don’t need to venture out to that either.

We shall see what March/autumn brings our way. Next blog post, I shall share some autumn recipes, because frankly, I’m done with the summer stuff. Until then, enjoy the change of seasons, wherever you are in the world.