The sky is dark now at 9 o’clock and summer, that time that we all yearn for and want to cling on to, is edging into autumn, the time that school years begin but the time that blows the leaves off the trees and that reminds us of our own ageing and death. The earth’s season’s go round and round but we, obviously, have only one life, and once we are in its autumn, there is no waiting for the spring, just a savoring of where we are, finding new things in it, a way to inhabit it (or maybe we dye our hair).

A holiday without a holiday. Four weeks off work but without an expedition. Holiday’s aren’t always what they are talked up to be. The Proms end in the first week of September, then the summer is over. Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle is playing now on the radio. I know the story but don’t have a clue which door we are about to open, they are clearly doors into the unconscious. There is some passion and terror happening at this moment! O no, do not insist on opening that last door!