I looked around the house yesterday, and the ceiling corners have filled up with spiders. I walked my dog and the sky darkened before we were tired. I felt the pinch of cool air and closed the bathroom window. Soon the heating will come on, and we will all be shoving our feet into thick, soft socks and our arms into woolly jumpers.
The autumn is my mother’s favourite season. It’s a time when running becomes comfortable again (although swimming less so). The children will kick leaves. There will be less sand in the house, and more mud.
It’s also a time for work, and for me that means writing.
My children are returning to school in the next few days, and I am starting to organise the fiction pieces that need to be edited and submitted. A couple of work projects have landed in my in-tray and they will be dispatched in the coming days.
My novel sits under a pile of flip-flops and neoprene, and my head needs to release the summer’s plot ideas and scene details, to be stuck onto the horrible patchwork that is my first draft.
I’ll miss having the children at home. But here we are, a new season, all full of promise. It’s time to make it work.