Where's autumn gone?

It's 5.30pm and pitchy black out, now that the clocks have changed for winter. It's at times like these that I wish I had a quilt under my desk so I could curl up and not have to get home in the dark. To be truthful - it's unseasonably warm, so it could be worse - although, of course, my perception of temperature is less than reliable....so maybe it's freezing really....
The leaves are clinging on to the trees for dear life but the wind today has made some of them start to fall. Quite a few are still spring-green though. I've been enjoying the cooler weather too - cooler nights and that nice cool when I step out of the door in the morning.
There were no conkers on the tree at the back of my flats this year - the heat of the summer meant that they didn't mature properly.
Do you know what a conker is?



The fruit of the horse chestnut tree - their prickly shells are in direct opposition to their shiny, smooth surfaces. And each year I collect a few and carry them in coat pockets because I love to feel the smoothness of them. When they first come down they're really shiny and smooth and as they dry out they crinkle and shrivel. But I don't have any this year.
I did have an acorn for a while, but it didn't last as well as a conker....
Even though it's rained quite a bit recently there isn't that damp, autumn feel. I wish I could capture that smell and feel to share it with you. The smell of woodland decay - leaves and barks and seeds gently settling for the winter, and yet - the result of that decay will be ready to feed the new growth in the spring. It's sad; I oddly miss cold winters and damp and dreary days - is the world dying? It's changing, that's for sure - in so many ways - I've changed, but it's changing too. I worry about what we're doing to the world - yet here I sit at my computer, consuming electricity and metals and plastics that will kill the world a little bit more. Will the world and I go down together? It's odd - I sit here and sometimes think that it would be better if we had never gone down this path of consumerism, of great technology - the search for new and bigger and better and how and why - that the simple life was better. But, of course, without all of that - or at least some of that - I would have died from cancer and wouldn't be here to think those thoughts.

Odd.