September Sun
The last festival tourists have gone, torn posters swirling with the leaves. A grey blanket of cloud swathes the city, giving heat like a Morningside miser. I'm wearing my jacket again. There's no denying it's dark earlier. Vegetable soup, log fires, and hot water bottles. And trips to the Highlands being planned: fire in the grass and bracken, deer roaring, friends gathering for a spiel.
And then I cycle to work today, a rare warmth in the sun, blue sky begrudging nothing, generous in its light and heat. People are walking more slowly, enjoying the experience.
Autumn can wait one more day.
And then I cycle to work today, a rare warmth in the sun, blue sky begrudging nothing, generous in its light and heat. People are walking more slowly, enjoying the experience.
Autumn can wait one more day.
Comments
I must admit that I like the Autumn/Winter period more than the rest of the year.
When I lived in the Highlands a few years back, I was reintroduced to the smell of a coal fire when the nights started to draw in. I hadn't encountered that smell since I was a boy.
I travelled through the highlands with a friend of mine for over a year and a half in an old Volvo. The old car had heated leather seats and we'd cruise though the snow in the mountains, dim light, swirling snow, taking things nice and slow.
I don't know why people always want to see things in blazing sunshine with no clouds. The rough weather is great and, to be honest, I enjoy it more.
I've always liked autumn too. And spring - the turning of the seasons in general!
Billy and I will be heading to the Blackmount in October, a time of early darkness, shivers of anticipation and frost in the air. I love the smell of a peat fire burning in the bothy hearth; tall tales and winter adventures, summer chased away down the glens, the gods of winter riding free about the hilltops.
I think it is just artists and hillwalkers who prefer winter!