October sun

 Every now and then I escape to the countryside for the weekend. I seemed to have picked a good one this time as it was hot enough to throw open the windows of my mum's (normally freezing) cottage and sit in the garden with books and wine (incidentally I practically inhaled All That I Am by Anna Funder, and dreamt of Nazis and fraught escapes across the border).

Now the sun is shrinking behind the houses and swallows are darting across the pale blue. The apple tree over my head is perilously dandling cooking apples the size of baseballs, some rusty-brown and pearled with mould. It is autumn- but not yet.