Menomboling; A Bit Of A Blether

It's the middle of August and I am bundled up like yon Michelin Man. (Did you know he's actually got a name? Bibendum. Latin for 'drinking' - the original ads were about the tyres being able to 'drink up the hazards' on the road.) 

Why am I bundled, you are asking? did you see yesterday's post? Today, no hosepipe - though it's threatening. 

What there is, though, is a mighty wind. 

The sort that has the leaves showing their underwear, and all of them running in one direction as they have no option of any other, resistance futile. Such waves of action cause one to know that one sees that wind. 

As the wind buffets the walls of the buildings, which stand firm against it, (no running in any direction for bricks and mortar), the noise is of huff and puff with a bit of bluster. This causes one to know that one hears the wind.

Then, as it slips up and over and around the open window, it hits out, bites in, kicks the skin. It lets one know that one can feel that wind.

Lifting one's head and allowing the breeze of blades pass one's nostrils, there is the faintest whiff of salt from the Clyde's dark waters, a hint of the dampness lingering, a soupcon - just the merest trace - of someone's lunch on the go. And in this manner, one knows too that it is possible to smell this wind. 

What there is not to be found in that wind, despite its arising from the south, is any degree of warmth. Nothing of the balmy about this one. On the fifty feet high beech trees it hisses and batters and bullies. 

These are the winds of memory. Of times on the hill farm, standing by a grandmother trying to hang the sheets in such a wind. That wind made the pine trees whistle and the honeysuckle scent was carried upon it. The ferns on the tall drystone wall flattened against their own roots. The winds of August take me back there every time. 

They belong not just to the Bonny Land. Down Under, in the opposite land, at the same time of year, often such winds would come. Fast, strong, high... Olympian. Making the eucalypts and she-oaks whisper loudly, rustling their petticoats and shedding their skins. Even there, when such winds came, I was back in the garden with granny, fighting sheets to the line.

These are the winds of change. The seasons turning. Down under to spring. Up here, to autumn. Rowan berries are now aglow, blackberries, raspberries, bilberries all primed for harvest. The leaves, those shameless, lingerie-displaying show-offs, have a hint  - just the tiniest tint - of decay.

Similarly, there is a change in me. I feel the autumn deepening within - and maybe even a hint of winter in these bones. A knowledge that what once was, is no longer. I think back to the granny in the garden. She is clear to the mind's eye. Then I look at the self-taken image and ... I am become she.