August

Summer is coming to an end but there are moments when it feels like it’s starting all over, like the sun is only just reaching its apogee.

After a storm, the days are hot and the nights are warm. Skies are the colour of well-worn denim, evening clouds are lambent with a peachy glow.

On a Tuesday that stars off damp, there are plans to eat chips, aioli and champagne on a friend’s balcony that’s tucked behind the harbour. The sun will glower shyly over the town as it sets.

I see on an Instagram flashback that exactly eight years ago we did exactly the same thing, except sitting on a boat in the harbour itself. Our past selves were in different places.

I think about how not much has changed since, for me anyway, and I wonder whether that’s good or bad…

I’m often thinking about time, how I sometimes wish it away, wanting to fast forward to the future.

I recently learnt that on Venus a day is longer than a year (its rotation being so slow as it goes round the sun). It spins the opposite way to Earth too, so the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. Skies are yellow and there are no seasons, no moon. Time means something different there.

Inevitably the weather does turn. Haar only makes a brief appearance but the sky is always milky. The sun disappears for days.

Signs of autumn have been around for a while though. 

I notice stalks of red berries beside a path near the river - like rows of unstruck matches. I look them up and see that they’re cuckoopint flowers and get a slight thrill at discovering they’re poisonous.

A few days later, something else red: a ladybird, tiny and scuttling on the ground. You almost never see them up here, in the far north of Scotland, but its tomato-coloured body stands out against the concrete slab. I learn the word aposematic when I read about them - when an animal’s bright colours are a warning to predators. 

But ladybirds are said to bring good luck - it’ll come from whichever direction they fly off to…

Under another burst of hot sun, I go on a walk in the evening along a path above the sea. For what feels like the first time there I can smell the brine, the seaweed, the changing of the tide. 

There’s someone swimming in the dark water of the outdoor pool.

The path loops around the headland, in between rocks fluorescent with algae and fields that are hopping with rabbits. Thistles that are turning to fluff are haloed, silver and gold.

Summer has lasted ages this year: long, dry days emerging from spring, sliding into autumn. 

But I’m looking ahead, wanting to fast forward - city lights, birthday cake, pumpkins. 

Summer will end, then start again.