summer, only a very old one

In a suburban house, October is grey like the suburban dystopias I've read about in novels (usually psychological thrillers). Wind and rain shake yellow leaves, the neighbours have dogs and prams and curious gazes. An atmosphere of quiet bleakness and tedious lives. My vanilla-coloured vintage leather coat feels out of place among Gore-Tex and softshell jackets.

But there are also flowers surprising me in the garden, half-frozen and withering. Blackbirds, magpies, woodpeckers and pheasants among the smaller birds outside the kitchen window. Over-ripe plums dripping juice from a windblown tree. A roaring fire to ward off the chill in a house with empty rooms. Silence that feels like kindness.

A feeling - both sad and comforting - that I don't belong here.

In the rain, I carry an old dog down the steps and then walk slowly, slowly, as he limps after me to sniff along the side of the street. I don't care if my mohair sweater acquires mud and the smell of wet dog.

I go to the fitness center in a grey, square building, as ugly as the grey streets around it. A hopeless greyness that induces weariness. Grey rooms, quiet and mostly empty. A vague smell of sweat and industrial cleaner. Working out on the crosstrainer still feels good, after I plug music into my ears and open my phone screen to a weird Kindle novel.

I walk for miles in the neighbourhood. There are large woods to get lost in. New streets where young families are moving into modern houses. Old streets where old memories dance around me like ghosts from the Seventies and Eighties.

The weather clears up, the sky rises high and blue and icy. The sun is low but warm and tricks me that this is summer, only a very old one.

a French town of all times

It's so typical of France - a town that no tourist has ever heard of, full of impressive ruins from Roman times. A huge triumphal arch, a well-preserved large amphitheater ... I gasp with delight. I love Roman ruins.

We happen to stop for the night just as the town is hosting a large festival that no tourist has ever heard of either. Outside a church, bathed in golden sunlight on a warm July evening, we drink the local beer and listen to people chatting around us. Loudspeakers in the tree branches above us play classical music. The bartender is beautiful, too beautiful for a small French town.

Onward we drift, to another sidewalk café where we feast on galettes as darkness falls. Are we the only foreigners in town?

We decide to go to a concert at 10 pm, much too late for a weary traveller. The 12th century abbey is mostly dark. Only the middle part is lit. A few dozen people sit in a semi-circle around a small stage where musicians play 17th century music on viola da gamba instruments - music that only serious lovers of classical music have ever heard before, I suspect. I'm not one of them. I've never even heard of viola da gamba instruments before.

A mezzo-soprano's soft voice sends German words drifting upwards to the vaults. The shadows around us flicker, smelling of stone and history. I almost doze off, lose myself in time. Am I in an obscure Roman town, in a medieval abbey with Benedictine nuns, in 17th century Königsberg with exiled musicians, on a French road trip in the scorching summer of 2022?

We walk back to the hotel at midnight, through empty alleys lit by weak streetlights. Too high on the experience to feel fear. Footsteps echo between stone walls, a cat jumps out of our way, plane trees rustle in the wind.