Relax and recharge.

Autumn finally caught a flight to Ireland yesterday and I've had to park wearing shorts around town until late spring. Better for the locals.But I feel like I've gotten away with something. 22nd of September and the rain was warm on today's spin. The lanes (I'm a lanes man) welcomed me with a carpet of beech nuts, defeated leaves and a handful of chestnuts. I felt like a hunter-gatherer on two wheels, searching for challenges and dancing in different directions avoiding incoming showers and outgoing energy.
I didn't get out yesterday when the Fall arrived and instantly did what it promised. No point slinging my leg over my whip and heading out into lightening, flash floods and pounding thunder. I love bad weather but I didn't have to go out and I'm glad i didn't. I welcome snow and ice, hail and heat, wind and downpours. But electricity isn't in any way predictable. Like going hiking in bear country, I fail to see why you might purposefully head into a risk zone. I was afraid to lose more than a Marbella tan.
Not bad, not bad at all that we've gotten to now with short sleeve and suncream spins. Time for the Gods of unpredictability to take hold. It's ok, the windfall apples and sun-tanned blackberries are baked up or preserved, those chestnuts beaten down off bruised trees are in corners fending off spiders. Fruit presses squeeze the life out of harvests and bottle it to keep us in the months ahead, those days of
eight hours of light. My plan is to savour the delights of this autumn time and later, filled with stewed apple or rosehip and chilli dip I'll go out again and breath the frosted air and smell the turned soil. Yup, after the day of the dead I'll go find life in the lanes and indeed in me again.
You see you can't ignore your DNA. Somewhere in those cells that built you up into what you are lies but a few atoms of your ancestors that settled in for a winter of rest and supplies to wait for better days. They showed you the way. You may now be chronically barbered, wear hide for shoes and not underwear, Lidl could be your larder instead of dried meat and I suppose killing your breakfast might be off the cards but really most of us are just one step removed from that flint-wielding, hut-dwelling visceral forerunner of ourselves. They took a break and watched the botched sunsets of chronic weather fronts and galloping winter storms and just rested. Enjoy the break. Never mind your coach. Listen to the tiniest echo of your distant past.