Seasons’ Fleetings

I don’t know what happened to Autumn this year. I guess it must have had another party to go to. It sure as hell didn’t stick around here for long. One day I’m giggling in the flurrying scurrying of red and yellow leaves, and toasting my toes in the orange glow of low sunlight, and the next I’m huddling inside my thickest of thick winter coats against the gloomy intrusion of dark days and chill winds. The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness has been elbowed aside by the impatient season of drizzle and dull dreariness.

I have a feeling that this is going to be a Long Winter.

Already the chickens are hardly bothering to come out of their house during the ever shortening daylight hours, and Lonely is sulkily moulting again, so we are down to only one egg a day. There is no growing or mowing of grass. Mud and hunger abound. The llamas are back to squabbling over buckets of hard food, and the daily routine has extended to include the hefting of hay here, there and everywhere. The pigs are pig sick of wallowing in mud without any nice hot sun to dry it off, and they complain bitterly of their damp and gloopy grass-free boredom every time we pass within earshot. And this morning a skinny, flitty Great Tit tapped on my bedroom window to remind me that the time has come to commence the daily filling of the bird-feeder with sunflower seeds.

On the plus side…. Let me think a minute… okay, yeah….

On the plus side, the countryside has taken off its green summer clothes and opened up its leafy curtains, to give us back our views. There may be less light, but we can, at least, see more of the light there is. And the hedgehogs have heeded the call to hibernation, leaving the dogs with one less reason to run off barking wildly and not heeding the call to COME HERE AT ONCE! And all the cats want to stay indoors and snooze all day, filling the house with furry, purry cosiness and a sense of sleepy well-being. And with no particular reason to be outside, I too can stay indoors. And write.

“Write?” I hear you exclaim, as one. If it is indeed the case that I am staying indoors with the cats and my muse, and writing, how come stuff isn’t appearing on this ‘ere blog with a tad greater degree of regularity? And the answer to this not unreasonable question, oh faithful readers, is this. I am writing a novel.

Hahahahaharrrrr! Well, I just thought I’d try saying it out loud to see what it felt like. And, now that I have stopped sniggering, I can get back to the oh-so-serious business of reinventing myself as a person who, for once in her life, actually finishes something that she has started.

Yeah… um… I’ll let you know how that all goes.