Fall

I hate autumn, because it's the precursor to winter, and I loathe the dead months of winter. It's one of the reasons I left Scotland and now spend winters in Spain. I tend to write during the winter, rising at 6am and writing 3000 words a day. When I lived in Argyll it was dark when I started work. It got grey about 9.30. At 3.30 it started to get dark again and was fully dark by the time I finished. I felt like I was living in a black hole and suffered severely from SAD. The tipping point was the death of my mother in '99. After months of ill treatment in hospital (and that is an understatement), and my daily return trek to Glasgow through the dark rainy nights of the writing weeks, she died alone in a gloomy and miserable ward just hours after I had left. She didn't want me to go, but the hospital wouldn't let me stay. I'll always remember looking back at her as I left, and will feel forever the guilt of not being there for her that night. When the policeman came to the door the next morning to break the news, I knew then that I was going to leave the country of my birth, and probably never be back. In fact, I wasn't back for years. My first return trip was to research The Blackhouse. I've been back many times since, and realize how much I miss being among my ain folk. However it was the French who showed faith in me when no one else did, and I feel very much at home here. My only real regret is that my parents didn't live to see my success. *Oh, my goodness! I didn't mean to write any of that. No idea where it came from. It was just supposed to be about a photograph of some leaves!