Fall

Don't you love it? Autumn has arrived like a wounded animal, snarling overhead and through the trees. Rain sits over the country like a dark-lord's shroud of hate. I love it, the dash from building to building, the warmth in the heavy air still healthy. It's a significant signal of change. Gutters full of leaves, contorting apple-tree branches straining to hold on and bear fruit. Heaving hedgerows braced for an annual cull. Horizontal rain encourages the windscreen wipers to quicken, conversations are short and curt, one eye skywards. Even though its 'inside' weather its too beautiful to be so. And the farmer's lucky run has fallen short, the final dice-throw wins muddy drills and laboured work. But it's been good. Nice, rose-tinted memories to recall over wine and a lit stove. Sun-stretched evenings in May and June, children playing into the dark, smiles and ochre burnt folk still around in August. It's been a healthy, beautiful toy of a Summer and early Autumn, a joy, a Bullfighter's run of passes and veronicas and adulation intercepted by a cornada in the last bullfight of the season in the faded light and glimmer of early September. Yes it has been a damn good run of growth and ripeness but now the Atlantic claws at us, reminding us who is really in charge for half the year.