charles barrow's writing

It's autumn, and leaves are on the turn. I took this photo of an Acer (I think) in my favourite park. It's definitely responding to the shorter daylight hours and cooler temperatures and is on the turn, changing into its autumn apparel. As the tree withdraws the supply of chlorophyll from the leaves, the green colouring that that chemical provides slowly recedes, and it happens by degrees along the length of a branch. So, the leaves on the outer tips of the branches can be the bright red seen in the photo, while the next set of leaves further up the branch can be part red, part green, and the leaves closest to the trunk retain, for the moment, their bright green colouring. This is Autumn arriving slowly; leaves turning by degrees. This coming Sunday, the last in October, here in the UK, we'll turn the clocks back by one hour. Always an adventure in time, and space, when this happens. The change officially marks the end of British Summertime, and the beginning of winter, at ...

  Are we still in lockdown? I know that people in some parts of the country are back in lockdown, but here in the south, where I live, we aren't (technically) though many of our freedoms are still curtailed, or re-curtailed (if that's even a word), so it certainly feels as though I'm still living in the shadow of it. Maybe I'll have to find a new word to use in my headings that better sums the up the new reality of where we are. Anyway, the thrust of this post is intended to be about the learning that I've done over the past few months as a way of reminding myself that I haven't just been resting on my laurels, or wallowing in self pity on a full-time basis. I've not been standing still, there has been forward motion, albeit at a stately pace. I've completed two on-line writing courses over the summer. The first was about memoir writing, and I did it through the DailyOm website. I have no intention of writing my memoirs, but it looked like a really inter...