Beginning

This Thursday's Theme did tax my brain a bit - but this is really a time of endings and beginnings for me, and for M, so I've been thinking in those terms about "beginning".

And so this picture - taken in East London's docklands, just across the Thames from where I live -



which is the ending of the day, but also the beginning of night.

There are all sorts of changes we're going through in my household and some of the endings are sad but many of them are positive - some also a relief. The beginnings are unpredictable - but then, thats life, isn't it? Its always unpredictable, even when we forget thats so.

There are always beginnings, at least potential beginnings, embedded in what we do from day to day, like secret seeds. Some of them might grow unseen into something lovely.

So my rather taxed brain thinks that beginnings often - normally? - include endings. But also that endings go with beginnings. "Segue into" beginnings. Segue is a good word.

I saw a conker today on the pavement. If you don't know what conkers are, click here for an old post I did about them. Way back when.... when I couldn't possibly have foreseen our current situation. A lot has ended and begun since then.

I was a little shocked to see that this conker was already ripe - like the elderberries I picked at the weekend. Autumn begins earlier these days than it used to, I'm not quite sure I'm ready for it.

But wearing cosy slippers again will be nice, theres nothing like a good pair of slippers, and open fires and that crisp chilly bright October air... Oh and autumn leaves....

And the seeds being shed now


will be there, dormant and waiting, ready for the beginning of Spring.



The cycle of life. Endings and beginnings. Commonplace and amazing, innit?



Oh, and as most of my work at the moment is to do with the beginning of our University term in 3 weeks time, eeek only 2 and a half weeks, I'm ultra-busy and apologise for not being "around" much in your comments at the moment. I hope to find more time soon...