Áilín Quinlan: Now is a winter of discontent for this inglorious son of York

“There’ll be no bonfires tonight,” the elderly client said gloomily.

It was close to lunchtime on Halloween, and we were at the salon getting our hair done.

We turned and gazed out the window at low, glowering grey skies.

“It’ll be desperate tonight,” the hairdresser agreed.

She had bags of goodies ready for the trick or treaters, she said, but she wasn’t expecting many, given the heavy rain forecast from Met Éireann.

“Well,” the client said gloomily, “we’re into it now.”

She sighed.

“November.”

“God, I hate November,” I said with feeling.

We settled back into our cuts & colours and our copies of Hello! Magazine.

Ah, November.

The thing about it is the greyness; October has gone, bringing with it the hilarious madness of Halloween – all those blazing bonfires and crazy costumes, the scary masks, the orange pumpkins (or, if you prefer to stay traditional, the hollowed-out turnips), houses with autumn wreaths on their doors and buried skeletons in their gardens, the treasure-filled barmbracks and the fun, fun, fun.

November doesn’t fare well in comparison with September either. That month’s traditional golden autumnal weather, its Indian summer (when you get them), and, for those of us with trees, an apple crop to harvest and store - wrapped in newspapers and boxed up, or stewed and frozen, or sliced up and frozen for winter-time apple tarts and crumbles.

And, of course, September boasts the busyness of back-to-school to distract us.

November doesn’t have any of that.

Most of all, November doesn’t have Santa Claus.

It also doesn’t have the golds and reds and greens of the festive season.

It doesn’t have magic.

November only has All Saints’ Day on November 1 and All Souls’ Day on November 2, neither of which float my boat.

November’s main claim to fame is that it’s the official Month of the Dead. Think ashen faces, sunken cheekbones, and empty eyes.

During November, tradition would have it, the ghouls stalk a land of withered stalks and bare trees before returning, on the final day of the month, to their graves, to lie in the chilly earth for yet another year. Cheery thought, that.

Nope. November doesn’t have much to recommend it despite a truly brass-necked assertion on a tourism website that November is a ‘lovely’ month to visit Ireland.

The writer – who clearly hasn’t ventured out of his/her/their centrally heated office in November for years - waxes lyrical about how Irish landscapes are “transformed” in November by the autumn foliage (doesn’t he/she/they realise they’re a month late?) and that the high mountain peaks are “sprinkled with snow” (em, rein yourself in there! Ireland rarely gets snow before January, if then.)

Seriously. Who wrote this twaddle?

Note to tourists: Lads, if you listen to this rubbish and pay money to come to Oirland in the bleakness of November on the basis of those claims, I’d be asking for my money back.

Now, this November may well be a bit different.

Previous ones can lay claim to some mildly interesting events (the first photograph of the Loch Ness monster, the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in Luxor, Egypt, and the birth of the EU), but this one will make sparks thanks to a British aristocrat dubbed ‘The Great I Am’ who has been described as spoiled, entitled, and arrogant.

A man notorious from his youth for tiresome shenanigans and whose latter-day ties to the late multi-millionaire child-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein have caused huge headaches for the British royal family.

This November is the first that, as numerous headline-writers have succinctly described him, The Andrew Formerly Known As Prince will experience without the shield of a royal title.

The former Duke of York has now lost his dukedom, earldom, barony, military ranks and royal patronages in what has been described as one of the most dramatic moves against a member of the royal family in modern British history.

Andrew has been dogged by allegations – which, it must be said, he most strenuously denies - that he sexually abused Virginia Giuffre, who tragically took her own life in April and whose heart-breaking memoir, Nobody’s Girl, was published posthumously recently.

Up to about three weeks ago, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor was the Duke of York, the Earl of Inverness, Baron Killyleagh, a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order and a Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter.

Now he’s plain Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, a commoner, and the subject of a humiliating eviction order from his own brother.

Not a broke commoner, it should be said, as a generous financial settlement is reportedly already in place for him.

Not a homeless commoner either.

Despite the eviction from the Royal Lodge, a stately home near Windsor Castle, AMW (HRH being no longer applicable) will, it’s said, eventually exit the Lodge, destined for some house or other on the King’s private estate in Sandringham, Norfolk.

Ouch. It signals a long winter for AMW, and brings to mind the words of the acclaimed war correspondent and novelist Martha Gellhorn: “In November, you begin to know how long the winter will be.”