This morning is quite thoroughly golden. The light against the avenue of trees I pass day in day out has flattened any perspective of leaf and branch. Each tree stands like a cut-out from a magazine. The still rising sun is low in the sky and shadows are only slowly retracting, slowly firming up. It’s the first school day in the city and there’s a change of tone in sound from the streets. It’s as though that gentle getting up time since late July has become a must be getting up time. All those electric kettles turned on at seven rather than nine must add something to this settling cloud of noise. On my desk a photo: my once little children outside the home front door have posed for the annual start of the school year snapshot; my youngest in a summer dress, long hair brushed, standing tall with a bright smile; the boys bright-eyed, impatient to be off. That first day when all of them walked together through the park, under the lime trees, carefully across the busy main road, under the railway bridge, down to the end of the cul de sac and their school. The saying goodbyes, the hug in the playground, then away into the school day they run. And now I walk back a longer way around, into the park, but a circuit past the tennis courts, to the lake with its still fledgling geese, up the steep hill to the college by the golf course, to the little wood at the top from where one inevitably stops to take breath, and if you stand on this bench can see two miles away the traffic’s relentless movement on the motorway and a horizon of distant hills. The sky is summer blue and the leaves still a vivid green, but there is a presage of autumn in the air. With it comes the possibility of alone-time, time to think and plan and do what’s been curtailed - for what seemed an eternity of keeping busy: to make each day a holiday, a time to grow and rest, a time to rest and grow.