High Days and Hot Leaves.

I was thinking earlier that there’s always a day some time after the first or worst rigours of winter when the temperature is high enough to go outside without a coat and feel comfortable. It can be as early as February or as late as May, but it has to come at some point. We should give it a name, shouldn’t we, and then everyone can go around with ‘Aha, it’s Joshua’s Day,’ or some such, on their lips.

‘Happy Joshua’s Day, Mrs Crimpletoe.’

‘And the same to you, Mr Bogfodder. How is Mrs Bogfodder?’

‘Very well, thank you. Enjoying the season, you know. We have a goose this year.’

That is what people do, isn’t it? I’ve quite forgotten.

It was warm enough to go outside without a coat today, which isn’t so unusual for October. What was a little unusual for October was the thunder we had this afternoon. The first peal was so loud and protracted that it quite startled me; I stopped on the lane and looked at the sky, somehow expecting that there must be something odd going on. There wasn’t.

And then I noticed a little something lying at the edge of the road. Among the ever-growing carpet of yellow and brown maple leaves, there was a single deep red one. I wondered whether it was a sign from nature, indicating that out there among the countless pointless distractions – the people and the politicians, the pressures and the privateers, the pretty things and the poultry sheds, the players and the poor bloody infantry – there is the odd nugget worth taking notice of and cultivating. Well, I already knew that, so maybe it was meant for somebody else.