The rhythm of life is a wonderful thing, possibly.

For those of you curious about the photos in my previous post: the boats are Dartmouth, but taken from the castle and looking upriver. The second picture, taken into the sun, is Prawle Point, and the last is Start Point - from the west (so taking the footpath that takes you away from the path to the car park).

Here we go again - September. No more reading in the garden till gone nine in the evening. No more waking to the song of the mistle thrush. No more playing in the river or hunting for wild strawberries. Soon it will be crumpets for tea and the shops full of sparkles.

I'm not, as you know, good at winter. And I'm not good at picking up the rhythm of life in the autumn. I love the anarchy of summer, the feeling that anything can happen any time - just because it's light and the sun is shining (some of the time). Now the schools are back the term-time routines have resumed and I am, unwillingly, picking up the threads again. The writing group, the book group, the choir.

I know I need these rhythms. However much I love the freedoms of summer life can't be like that all the time. I need to wake up and know that, just because it's Tuesday, I need to get up and get out on time. I don't have to like the discipline of it. But I know that, if months stretched ahead of me without any sort of routine, I might slip into complete lethargy and become the doddery old soul in the corner drooling into my tea long before the years dictate.

Which is why, reluctantly, I am embracing September. It is an opportunity - I know that - to be more purposeful. And I do my best to see it like that. Even so, I can't help feeling as I did at the beginning of every school year as a child: do I really have to do this just because it's good for me.

Yes, I do. (At least until January, when I can go AWOL again!)

Vests

This follows from my autumnal thoughts on Monday.

(Goodness, I never thought I'd be blogging about vests!!)

I can only speak for myself here (though I shall be curious to see how many of you recognise this process). I was made to wear vests as a child. In winter they kept me warm, and in summer - well, it was polite. It's what girls did. Presumably to mask any hint of development for as long as possible. A hangover from Victorian morality where layers of clothing was seen as an essential deterrent to any predatory male (or, presumably, female).

Oh how I longed to ditch my vests! I abandoned them at every opportunity, hid them at the back of the wardrobe and crumpled them, put them in the washing at reliable intervals in the hope that no one noticed that I would not wear them. Imagine, being out with a lad, and he was fumbling up your shirt (you knew it wasn't allowed and you shouldn't let him, but surely a five-minute fumble wouldn't matter?) and he found a vest!! You'd want to die, wouldn't you? You'd never emerge into mixed society again for he was bound to have told everyone in the whole wide world and they would all know this terrible thing about you - you wore a vest. So I didn't.

For years, even in the depths if freezing winters, I'd not wear a vest. I'd pile on jumpers and fleeces and shiver by the fire but no, I'd not be seen dead in a vest.

But then, when I took the decision not to buy a car but to use public transport, I knew I'd have to be equipped for stations and bus stops in the cold and if I wasn't to freeze I'd need Serious Clothes. That's when I bought a drawer-full of thermals - vests (both long- and short-sleeved), socks, and long johns. Some are almost pretty - and all are functional. They do what they claim they do. While they can't keep out the most determined Arctic wind, I have rarely been driven inside by the cold. I can stand at bus stops beside people who are stamping their feet and rubbing their hands and be - not hot, but warm enough. Which they clearly aren't.

But what, I hear you asking, about the man who might want an exploratory fumble? Pah - if he's going to mark me out of ten for wearing a vest on a cold day, then I'm really not interested.

Is this what they mean by grown-up?

The year is turning.

As promised, I'm not blogging about voice any more. But there's an interesting discussion in the comments after my last post for anyone wanting to see Trish Nicholson and I grappling with it.

And now, on to lighter things.

It seems we've had our summer. All those lovely warm days, sitting in the garden with the hum of bees for company, skin smothered with sun block, book on my knee. For once we had some real weather - and wonderful it was too.

But now the lights are on before seven in the evening. My sandals are back in the wardrobe. T-shirts are hidden under fleeces and cardigans excavated from the dust in my drawers. Firewood for my woodburner is heaped by the back door. The garden is looking ragged - it needs me to take serious secateurs to the bushes, even a saw to the bigger shrubs. The man who wields the loppers will visit and my compost will overflow. (I no longer do anything that involves standing on ladders in the garden. I've been stuck in a shrub once - it was funny the first time...) I'll stand by the incinerator for a few hours and come back to the house smelling as I used to after visiting the protesters at Greenham Common.

The house is chilly - for now I'll turn to vests and fleeces but before long I'll give in and turn the heating on. The radiators will click and the rooms will warm and I'll close the curtains against the cold and the rain and the dark. I'll light the woodburner - and there is comfort in the flames.

And then - I'll turn to my Lonely Planets. For this is the time of year when my thoughts turn towards your freezing days of January. My flight to Cuba is booked. I have a hotel in Havana for the first few nights. I shall read Dervla Murphy and Graham Greene and, as my fire flickers and the wind howls, my mind will be in the warmth, the sunshine, and my body will sway to the music. There are worse ways to hibernate.

Back to school.

I know, many are heaving sighs of relief. The school holidays are done, the little darlings (not so darling in the last weeks of August) are dressed again in uniform grey, or navy, and heaving sacks of books off to school. They will return full of grumbles about Mr So-and-So and how little Johhny up the road never does any homework and gets away with it so why do they have to wrestle with Pythagoras so please, please, please can they have their phones back because they simply have to talk to someone they saw just half an hour ago ...

The days resume a routine, a familiarity. We all know what we're doing. From 8.30 to 9.00 the streets are full of young people, mothers with straggling youngsters, and working men and women relaxing in their shops and offices and building sites knowing that they don't have to worry about the children for a few hours. Phew.

There is another side to this. I'm 'retired' (whatever that means), so there's no going back to work, no resumption of routine. I get up when I feel like it, the same as always. I eat and read and wander round my lovely market town at any time of year.

But the town - ah, that's where the difference tells. No young people in the corners, lads with their trousers round their bottoms (how do they stay up?), women with wonderful bosoms on display. All those tattoos and piercings and telling the world about who did what to whom last night. No children hanging around the cafes licking ice creams. The playground is quiet, the swings still, abandoned. And the toy shop, which has been busy all summer, suddenly quiet. I can move in there and it feels wrong. The woman at the counter shuffles papers and doesn't know what to do with herself.

The streets are now free, for people just like me. Respectable, with careful hair and shopping trolleys. We remember our pleases and our thank yous. We discuss the new shop, have we been in there yet, I wouldn't bother if I were you, oh I thought it was rather good. We wonder if we have time to stop for coffee.

Nobody balances on the kerbstones. Nobody plays 'bears' along the cobbles. Nobody tugs at a sleeve and asks for an ice cream. And I miss them - these children, these young people who have filled the streets with energy and laughter.

Roll on half term.