Autumn

Autumn seems to be on its way at last - colder now, although the days have been bright and sunny. Windy.

Today, determined not to stay indoors, I went out blackberry picking.
The wind was absolutely piercing: chilling, in spite of the sun. Yet in the lee of the hedges, in the sunshine, it was warm.
I had the most amazing couple of hours on my own, alone apart from my thoughts. And my mobile phone.

Now, I have a phone ONLY because my family say I need one. Never mind that they then get cross with me if they try to call, because I rarely have it on me. My excuse is I don't always have pockets. So what's a girl to do? I always leave it in a safe place, it's just that I might not be near it. Anyway, I digress. I have a phone. I have a NEW phone. Again, only because my family gave it to me for my birthday. I'd managed to resist getting a new one - my old one worked, it just didn't have enough battery power to sustain a phone call. I never minded that, as I never called anyway, just texted occasionally. And so my family got cross with me when they tried to call because, even if I answered - being near enough to hear it etc etc - then the phone would cut out and die.

So what was amazing about the phone?  What was amazing was that it has a RADIO on it. This tiny, pocket-sized piece of electronic gadgetry has a radio. It took me a little while to work out how to actually tune it in, but after that I was away. Gardeners Question Time - resuscitating dead gardenias (not possible, as it turned out); A View Through a Lens - tigers in India ( a bit boring, I turned back to Radio Guernsey for a few minutes); Classic Serial The Ladies' Delight by Emile Zola - riveting, in spite of being distracted by the country English accents of Parisian characters; and Open Book with the wonderfully named Mariella Frostrup, interviewing Susan Hill and two authors writing two different novels featuring immigrants to Paris - which got me wondering about my grandmother who studied at the Sorbonne over a hundred years ago...

It was such a delicious afternoon. I ventured only a couple of hundred metres from home but spent a couple of hours in the sunshine, picking blackberries, wearing headphones and intently listening, listening, listening...

And blessed God for the sunshine, the fruit, the peace - and my family for the gift.