Teenage weather

One moment it's bucketing, the next it's blue skies (but with dark clouds racing over the fells) so I ditched the work and ran outside to capture the leaves before they blow away. I've been trying to avoid taking a photograph of leaves, as it's such a cliche of autumn, but every morning when I go out I can hear them snapping off the branches and falling through the air. Tempis fugit.

And in the act of photographing them I think of the girls running through leaves as brightly coloured as their hair, with their wellies and hats on, or throwing handfuls of them around like confetti, or of all the dogs I've ever owned charging through them, barking with abandon, and making them scatter. All time contained in one moment.