Is It Autumn?

I walked to the station this morning and there is a chill in the air. The wind is blowing and it's driving the cats crazy - they feel something moving and they have an unbuilt desire to chase but they aren't sure what!

As I stood on the platform I looked towards Dundonald hill and saw the sun coming over with the promise of warmth later on, but glancing around the platform with the puddles and sticks I though we are on our way to Autumn.

This leaf was laying and I loved the raindrops sitting on it, belying the wind howling around us. It was sheltered of course by the tree it had newly fallen from. I was reminded of the three autumns I spent away from Si. Right back at the start. The first year, he was round Britain and over to Sweden. The next year, the Gulf - that time fighting for Sadam rather than against him. The third year he was in Australia and Hong Kong. Each of those years we spent more months apart than we spent together and there were no mobile phones. We wrote not every day but probably three or four times a week.

I still have a box in the attic with wrapped bundles of his letters to me and mine to him. Some are funny, some are sad, some I should probably get rid of before someone else reads (blush). But we still have the envelope which I sent in October 1988 which is full of dried up leaves.

While I missed him, and worked in Dunfermline, before I opened for the day I would walk through Pitencrieff park at 6 in the morning. One morning I was so taken with the colour of the leaves I thought he should have a little bit of Autumn there in the middle of the Australian summer and off they went in the envelope.

I think that one was greeted in amazement by the rest of the mess - but not with as much hilarity as the one with the girlie magazines (purchased by the mother-in-law to be [because she wanted to have a quick read first])which I sent with several bars of chocolate which had melted all over them!

Everyone should write to someone they love - letters mean a lot!