Ticking clocks and pumpkins...

I know. It’s been a while...

I’m sitting at home and pondering the strangeness of spare time. I actually have holiday and I am so unaccustomed to it, I’m not sure what to do with myself... The soundtrack of the house around me is one of a ticking clock and distant washing machine: a clock from my grandmother’s house, now hung on my wall and if I close my eyes I can imagine her living room, the cool silence of a family reading, my gran sitting with a poodle on her lap, her eyes distant, her hand worrying at the hem of her skirt... The sky outside looks like a vast slab of pale marble, the glitter of the rock made up of fine rain.

You’re probably wondering why anyone would take time off in October? When the sun is an irregular visitor, when the house is cool enough to warrant putting the heating on maybe once or twice a day. When even the ducks and swans on the river are questioning the good sense of being half immersed in cold, green water.

I have two words for you... Autumn and Halloween.

I love this time of the year. There’s just something about the early morning mists, the dew laden cobwebs, candle-lit pumpkins, crunchy drifting leaves, being able to wear gloves and jumpers and drink hot chocolate all the time... The Pagan year is coming to a close, the veil between worlds is thin and I feel the magic in the air and inspiration seems to come with every breath...

So why am I being baffled by having time on my hands? I think it’s partially from being inside. I need to get outside and soak up the season and let it work it’s magic on me, even with the rain and the grumpy ducks. I need to be writing again - I feel like I’ve lost a limb and the phantom sensation of writing is eating at me, the shape of the pen almost in my hand and the scratch of paper just out of hearing.

So why am I sitting here still? I feel like the day has stalled...

I need to go and buy pumpkins...

Minutiae

Somebody once said that the Devil was in the details and as writers we're always looking for the little things that concrete the reality of our writing.  But how far can you go?  Where's the fine line between appropriate attention to detail and OCD?

I'm sitting in my usual coffee house, in my usual seat, by the window on the first floor, overlooking the market.  It feels like the first day of Autumn; the sky is a flat mist grey and the awnings of the market look subdued, like off-season deck chairs.  The people walking below have slumped shoulders, heavy bags, yawns splitting their faces wide open.

This all seems like appropriate attention, I'm not dwelling on a list of every bloom sold on the flower stall, or describing everything that the man sitting on the bench below is wearing...  Although I like the way he stares off into his thoughts as he struggles to zip up his jacket, a cigarette dangling between his fingers.

But the things that mesmerise me, that make me pause; the way the milk blossoms and billows through the tea when I first pour it in, like a fast growing coral, pale against a mineral brown sea...  The way one lone white feather flutters on the pavement in the breeze of everyone's footsteps...  The way that the woman on the phone behind me has perfect hair except for a couple of loose strands, standing out from her head in a half circle of gold that glints in the light...

I feel I teeter on the brink of over-description constantly, because of the tiny things that catch my eye - shiny, silver details clamouring for the magpie mind.  It would be so easy to fall into that cloud world of heat and motion in that grande Earl Grey, or to sit by the market and watch the passage of that feather as it attempts to touch the passers-by with its simple beauty.

The film of the plastic bag in "American Beauty" captivates me, I see the beauty in the disposable, the shape of the wind in that dancing plastic.

But do we get lost in those moments?  Does it take us away from ourselves for a brief respite, a reminder of the gloriousness of the overlooked, the minutiae of our lives?  Or do we lose connection with each other whilst we are absorbed in the details?

I don't know, but I love the way my tea blossoms and the dance of that feather and I wish there were more opportunity to write about these things without losing track of the bigger picture.