It’s Official
It is autumn, or, if you’re on the other side of the Atlantic, it is officially Fall.
I like that you lot call it Fall. I like that we know how to change the clocks, because we ‘spring forwards and fall back’. I wouldn’t use ‘fall’ to mean ‘autumn’, obviously, but... you know... I like that you do. I like the idea that the year slides into winter, that it is a low point.
Anyway, I’m getting off the point.
It’s a little before nine on a Sunday morning and we have just taken delivery of the first consignment of logs for the year. I will set the first fire of the autumn later today, and this officially marks the end of the summer. It’s not so bad, it will be October tomorrow; conkers are maturing nicely on the tree down the street, and even beginning to fall; the air is crisp in the mornings; the husband now rises before the sun comes up, and the central heating has started to come on in the parts of the house that have it.
I like that we are marking the end of one season and the beginning of another, today. Generally speaking, the beginnings and ends of things are less distinct than they used to be. I don’t know if it’s because we’re getting older, or whether projects just overlap more now that we do so many of them, both together and separately. Perhaps its because we don’t have the inevitable routine that is the school year to punctuate our lives now that both of our children have left home. I don’t know. Perhaps it is because time seems to move so quickly that there is no hiatus between projects any more, no time to take stock, to enjoy the end of something, to celebrate, to muse over what has gone before or to contemplate what is to come.
That is one of the things that has to change, I think.
So, as this is the last day of the month, I’d just like to celebrate the fact that I finished a batch of edits on my own first novel, "Naming Names" this month, completed the last chapter of a serialised, collaborative e-novel and put another very personal project to bed. These three projects could not have been more different, one from another, and it’s purely coincidence that they have all come to fruition in the same month.
There are beginnings, too. The husband and I are pitching another collaboration, or two (or possibly three). I’m already working on a very fun novel that I refuse to talk about on the grounds that it might incriminate me. (Yep... I’m pleading the 5th! I exercise my right to remain silent), and I’m discussing a second novel of my own with my lovely agent; ironically, it’s called “The Winter Lamb”, and I can’t wait to get started on it.
I do hope that Keats was right. I do hope this autumn promises ‘mellow fruitfulness’, lots and lots of fruitfulness; we’re busy people and fruitful is exactly what we need to be. I might just use my last blogs of future months, when I remember, to stop and think about what I might have achieved in the previous thirty days, though, because, once in a while, it’s not a bad idea to remind myself of just how far I’ve come.