I think it is a little too early, but out here in ruralville the airwaves are already awash with ads for Christmas get aways. At work our coffee room conversations too are taking a decidedly christmas-sy bent: turkey shopping, holiday bookings, grand children, the company christmas ball and fine wine seem to come to the fore a little easier these days. The weather man promised an Indian summer of sorts, but our sun – for all its light – seems to be the evil twin of the one which terrorised us a scant few months ago, all light and no warmth ably aided by the wind which howls through every open space like a spurned suitor.

These days I catch myself gazing wistfully at the city as I walk to and from work,  and thinking – about memory, and time, and loss, and how they all come together to shape the present and define the course of the future. A lot of it is nostalgia, an inordinate longing for how things once were, and will never again be, but I imagine one is allowed some measure of self delusion after all. Deep down in my head, I suspect that my dalliance with old Blighty is done, and I must needs turn my gaze to new vistas soon.

Change – inexorable and ineluctable – appears to be the over arching motif of the season. Outside, the greens of a few weeks ago have turned into dirty browns and the occasional golden reds – where the wind in its fury has not stripped the trees of all their foliage. Life, like an orchestra conducted to a crescendo by an unseen Kapellmeister, hurtles on.