The Doors perfectly captured the mood of those last days of sunshine before the days get shorter and the leaves start to turn and fall. 

“September days have the warmth of summer in their briefer hours but in their lengthening evenings a prophetic breath of autumn.”

The words of the Victorian author and farmer Rowland Evans Robinson come to mind on what may be the last day of our Indian summer, with the temperature in London forecast to reach 25 degrees Celsius (79F in old money) this afternoon.

Robinson would never have heard The Doors but I have – and this was always one of my favourite songs, capturing the season, Jim Morrison’s wistful melancholia underscored by Ray Manzarek’s pretty piano and Robbie Kreiger’s woozy slide guitar.

As Jim sings: “We had some good times but they’re gone. The winter’s coming on.”

Summer’s Almost Gone was one of the first songs Morrison wrote and (supposedly) played for Ray Manzarek when they met on Venice Beach in July 1965.

That was the meeting cringily recreated by Oliver Stone where Val Kilmer’s Morrison approaches Kyle MacLachlan’s fellow hippy Manzarek on the sand and says: “Hey man, let’s form a rock’n’roll band.”