I THOUGHT we’d lost it there for a minute – the drizzle that set in on Thursday evening as I walked the dog seemed to signal at last the end of an unfeasibly long summer.

But as I write this, the overcast start to the day has given way once more to blue(ish) skies and sunshine, and I am once again berating myself for bringing my raincoat into work.

There it hangs, unused over the back of my chair, its rustling when I move a constant reminder that, one day soon, it will be called back into action.

But for now at least, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness will have to wait.

Actually, that’s not quite true. Autumn is making its presence felt in the changing colours of the leaves, the cooler evenings and mornings.

But instead of barging its way in as it has usually done by this time of the year, it is having to ever so gently try to nudge summer out of the way. Thing is, summer is staying put.

In this collision of two seasons, we have a classic Indian summer, when children don’t have to put on their coats to go knocking conkers out of trees – do they still do that? I hope so.

It is a period of uncertainty, as baffling as trying to discover the exact origin of the term itself, when you never really know what to wear or what to do, especially outside, as if at any moment the skies will darken, the temperature will fall, and summer’s end credits will go streaking across the sky.

Barbecues should have been cleaned up and stored away in the garage or the garden shed by now, but instead they are being pressed into overtime.

The weather has also set me reminiscing. I can only really remember a very few other occasions when the predominantly dry weather we are having was at this time of the year accompanied by consistent sunshine and warm temperatures.

During the late-1990s I recall spending a very pleasant week on the coast of Northumberland, soaking up the rays and wondering when the heavens would open.

They didn’t. True, it took a while to warm up in the mornings, but when it did, it felt like late July.

Further back, in the mid-1980s, I remember spending a very pleasant Sunday afternoon on a beach, again in the north east of England, thinking that if I’d spent a sizeable amount of money seeking the sun abroad, I would not have been happy, given the riches we were enjoying.

And right back, to the age of seven, when I was coming to terms with being a brother and suddenly being left much more to my own devices while my parents coo-ed over my newborn sister.

That was 1971, and though the passage of time can often paint the past in far brighter colours than when it was the present, I remember that September and much of that October – in Derbyshire at any rate – being glorious.

That really was a year when conkering – the art of throwing unfeasibly large pieces of snapped-off branch back up into horse chestnut trees to dislodge their fabulous fruit – had to be carried out coatless, as the sun beat down on sweating faces.

I also remember from that year, endless games of football on the bone hard recreation ground, probably 16 or 17 players on each side, rolling home as the sun began to set, having won or lost by the odd goal in 63, to set about the task of scrubbing ground-in grass stains from grubby knees in the bath.

Autumn that year probably descended abruptly, but I can’t remember that, only the hours of enjoyment that preceded it.

I can remember gazing in wonder too, as I got ready for school in our house at the top of the hill, at the village in the dip below swathed in what appeared to be cotton wool, the church towers poking out magically from the mist.

Driving to work earlier this week, I came upon a similar view from Risca Road in Newport, looking down beyond the tower of the civic centre, on a vista of pure white, save for the tops of some higher buildings.

That is a true sign of autumn though again, amazingly, as the day progressed, summer stood its ground, brilliantly outstaying its welcome.

Mellow fruitfulness, for now at least, be damned.