Wind in the first week of October

The wind always gets suddenly colder in the first week of October. It’s the beginning of browns and reds appearing everywhere. I walk my youngest son to school. He can’t resist kicking through the piles of dry leaves. He simply has to walk through them. It’s as if he is pulled along by an unseen force. And it slows him down as he turns round for another goBack home I notice the little shrubby tree in a pot a the front of our house has shed most of its leaves, but it still has its deep pink seed pods, like tiny rose coloured pumpkins. The plant belonged to our late next door neighbour... he had a great selection of front garden plants that I redistributed around he neighbourhood after he died.Today is the birthday of our late next door neighbour on the other side (both have died in the last year and a half). He would have been 65 today, but succumbed to lung cancer in June. On our hedge cutting days we would chat and he sometimes mentioned vague plans about moving to a cottage in the country with his beloved dog. But I have my doubts. He was born and brought up around here, in these streets, with this wind.