Autumn

Hot water bottle weather has arrived. Yesterday a thick mist settled over Bristol. Walking in Ashton Court, one could imagine a place far more isolated... All is grey, and there's a fine spritz of rain. Illusory rain. Put out your hand and you can't feel it on your skin. But touch your hair and it's fluffing, curling, fed by a hazy damp. The view of Bristol between the trees is obscured, sound deadened. The only noises are conkers thudding on the grass as they quit the trees, and the brutal unexplained crack of twigs. Birds, all black of course, punctuate the cloud. A cyclist lurches up the hill, his flourescent yellow jacket a sudden jar on the landscape. He pants by and is subsumed by the gloom as soon as he appeared.