So I'm just back from Edinburgh.
I say 'just'; it's been over two weeks, but it's taken all of that time to re-adjust to Beccles Town.
For a start, the streets of my rural abode aren't littered with A5 paper-flyers, themselves littered with quotes & reasons as to why I should 'not miss' a particular show.
If Beccles needed to advertise in this way, it would probably put up one hoarding saying "It's a bit shit, but pop-in if you're free?"
This will be the title of my next show.
The other thing that sets Suffolk apart from Scotland's capital city, is the smell.
At this time of year we are constantly awakening to a fug that can only be described as 'shitty'.
As a child, my parents would chastise me for wrinkling my nose, and follow this up with "It's only a bit of muck!"
For the past few years however, 'a bit of muck' has begun to smell like human faeces.
I'm reliably told that it is chicken-shit, lovingly matured by the local poultry 'manufacturers' a la Mr.Matthews, but I'm also reliably told (by another source) that the local water companies sell-on our own human waste, which is then degraded to a rich-smelling manure, for use in agro-chemical spreading.
It's not pleasant.
My wife says it smells like blood & bone, or kitten-kibble, and this makes me think it isn't in anyway similar to the grassy horse-poo we use on the allotment!
Anyway; today the air is free of smells.
It's blustery, sunny & cool, and there's a distinct sense that a new seasonal-chapter is about to open.
I love autumn.
I love it so much, I don't mind referring to it as 'Fall'.
For clean-freaks like me, September is a time to start emptying those slug-pubs, turning the compost-heap, harvesting the last corn-cobs, tomatoes & elderberries, chopping up firewood and tidying up the land, as we head into the ever-darkening months of winter.
I love days like these.
And as I leap from my bed and put on my well-worn gardening clothes, I catch my foot in my braces, stumble towards a sleeping kitten, narrowly miss squashing her, by concocting a sort-of Highland Fling-meets-Diversity dance-step, trip over three pairs of jodhpurs, two pairs of gaiters, a riding helmet and crop, and land with an almighty thump, somewhere between salvation & hospitalisation.
I'm ok.
A bit bruised & broken.
Just totally fucked for another day.
Autumnal smell or no smell, the garden & allotment can wait for a bit.
There's only so much you can do with elderberries anyway.......
