Autumn feeling

It's starting to feel like autumn. You start to feel the cold in the air at night, it's getting dark too quickly and no matter how gingerly you walk past trees the leaves are starting to fall. It rained all day. It's time to get the roll neck jumpers ready. Soon we'll all be drawing the curtains as soon as we get home and pressing our backs against the radiators.

It didn't feel this way 36, 000 feet up as we flew back to London from Dubrovnik. Everything felt possible. My mind was racing with plans; getting in shape, starting a photography course, I was tempted to buy expensive colognes from the duty free shop and start anew. I even thought it possible to win the Aston Martin outside the duty free shops, even though I hadn't paid £20 for the raffle ticket. I felt like James Bond up there. The pilot spoke in a confident self-assured manner. We were in safe hands. (I think the secret to becoming a pilot is it's all in the voice).

Back on the ground today, navigating my way through the rain things don't feel so good. The pilot in my mind is George Costanza and there's no reassurance. For some reason I always think about being at University when autumn approaches. It's because it started in the autumn and I'm always thinking of when we went down to the Albert or Ye Cracke in the cold, with everyone from the house in Grove Park and meeting up with people from Uni, in about 1992. Everyone in doc martens and big coats. It makes me nostalgic and melancholy too.