The Edge of Summer

Today has been warm and this evening balmy. I drove home with the car roof down, it was still just light at 10.00 o'clock, the air smells of cut grass and one of our neighbours had a party in their garden. It feels like the front edge of summer.

I like the way the seasons change and am as happy with the move through autumn to winter, with its short days and dark journeys home (Edinburgh is a city particularly well adapted to those sorts of days), as I am with the lengthening days of late spring and summer. It is the variety I like and, by the time we have had one season, I am ready for the next one. I particularly like the front edge of each season, when the change is obvious and the new season fresh and ahead of us. Summer holidays are pending (not that I've got the length of booking mine), the parks are full of cheerful lunchtime refugees from hot offices and sports days, school concerts and doubtless exams fill the minds of children. It is too easy to wish time away - Friday beckoning on Monday, July holidays beckoning in June. I should try to shed sufficient busyness to enjoy time for its own sake.