The First Day of Winter

It was 5c as I drove down to the dentist at eight o'clock this morning, the car icy cold and misted up as the fog rose slowly from the valley below, like smoke. A little sunlight suddenly lit up the clusters of houses nestling among the trees and I realised, unexpectedly, that I was going to miss this.

It felt like the first day of winter, and I shivered as I pulled on more layers of clothes and spent it preparing for departure. I will be up at 5am tomorrow for the two-hour drive to Toulouse and the two flights that will tip me up in Glasgow for an overnight, before another early rise and the dawn plane to the isles.

The day before a journey is always an odd, treading water sort of day. I took care of all those niggling little things I have been putting off for weeks, and ended up in the attic, covered in cobwebs and rummaging through boxes of archives. It was there I came across a letter which had crossed my threshold more than forty years ago and changed my life. It was an odd feeling to hold it in my hands again. I dusted it off and took it downstairs to scan it and write a blog piece about it. Anyone interested can read it here.

I packed. I toured the house with my good lady making notes about those things we would send down to Spain in the furniture van ahead of our migration next month. I had a long telephone conversation with a producer about a TV adaptation of the Lewis Trilogy. I cursed the latest Apple download which has completely screwed up my sliding screens, and finally succumbed to a fine bottle of Cahors wine.

Truth is, I don't want to leave. It'll be fine once I am on the road, but the day before... And it was all made so much worse by it being the first day of winter.