Autumnal windows, old and new.

Now that the clocks have gone back one hour and the sun sets before five o'clock, I love to get up early, earlier than daylight, and watch the light come in and then the slow or swift fall of leaves and the change of colours around me. This is the view from the window of the old office (right), and the new (below), where I moved last week. For my wish was granted at last, when I had lost all hope it would ever be. 

I often re-read Persuasion at this time of year, and I particularly love the following passage, in which Anne Elliott is walking in the country with her annoying sister and some friends, her former fiancé, Captain Wentworth, among them: 

The sweet scenes of autumn were for a while put by, unless some tender sonnet, fraught with the apt analogy of the declining year, with declining happiness, and the images of youth and hope, and spring, all gone together, blessed her memory. (...) [A]fter another half mile of gradual ascent through large enclosures, where the ploughs at work, and the fresh made path spoke the farmer counteracting the sweets of poetical despondence, and meaning to have spring again, they gained the summit of the most considerable hill, which parted Uppercross and Winthorp and soon commanded a full view of the latter, at the foot of the hill on the other side.

It is typical of Jane Austen to say the most important thing as an aside. She never means to preach, and this is one of the reasons why she is such a convincing writer, besides being such a constant pleasure to read. 

'Meaning to have spring again' should be my new motto. 

Yesterday, we went on another tour on the sightseeing bus (possibly our tenth or more since we moved to Glasgow; I've lost count). It was an undecided day, between rain and shine. Perhaps this is why there is something water-colourish in this picture of Glasgow University above one of the bridges over the river Kelvin, just before the stop for the Kelvingrove museum. I have no idea where the cream frame came from. I'm still learning how to use the ipad, and sometimes it seems to have a will of its own. I don't mind. The glass between the image and the lens seems to have changed the light, ehnhanced it somehow, touched up the colours, given the clouds an extra swirl. 

Looking at a picture I took and seeing in it something I did not mean to put there is always a pleasant surprise. Much like writing a piece and forgetting about it and then reading it again after a while, and thinking: "Who wrote this? Did I write this?" It's a kind of happiness, that.