Leave my pumpkin spice latte alone

It didn’t matter that it was 33˚C. Starbucks staff across Britain spent the beginning of September putting out pumpkin-themed menus, selling customers pumpkin spice lattes in pumpkin-shaped mugs, to be drunk alongside a slice of pumpkin-flavoured loaf cakes, a pumpkin seed cookie, or a brownie cut into pumpkin shapes and frosted in hazardously orange icing. Happy fall, y’all.  

The hot early autumn didn’t stop us obsessives: there is, inevitably, an iced pumpkin spice latte. The spice mix in question, of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, clove and sulphur-based preservatives doesn’t necessarily have to include any pumpkin. Instead, it refers to the spices put into a pumpkin pie. And that tells you something that’s obvious about pumpkin spice: this is an all-American phenomenon. 

Your British autumns have nothing on American fall. The two words might conjure up the same crisp mornings or the same ripe, earthy smell of dead leaves, but that’s where the similarities end.