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Late September.

 Woodpiles are growing. Ordered and patterned they poke from under balconies, eaves and tarpaulins. The various music  of  log cutting and splitting fill the early evenings and weekends while trailers and carts rattle up and down the lanes. Under my hat brim the sloping sun light is still  strong and makes me squint as I splash into the pipingly cold lake water. I haven`t quite got the wet suit habit as Roger Deacon eventually did.

Flocks of finches, a yellow hammer or two and some  linnets startle up from the red rutted field as I walk back glowingly.  Small coppers and heaths and blues crowd onto the last flowers of cosmos and savoury. The coppers defending their chosen flowers with dancing attacks on the other butterflies. A golden season.

I am borrowing the long, aluminium ladder from Bertrand and he has left the barn door open for me to collect it with no offer of help.He says yes, yes, by all means take it, you are welcome.  I stagger with it round to the front of the house and climb to clear the honeysuckle, to unplait the tangle and spoil the sparrow roost. Sylvie has obviously sent him to check up, perhaps for my safety perhaps for another mysterious reason for he appears in his slippers and starts chatting and puffing.  I say I have done as I climb down. So, he  sighs,  bravo, job well done and then walks off, leaving me to carry the ladder back to his barn.