Dawn to Dusk

Happy Birthday today to my second to oldest friend Dawn. Dawn and I have been writing to each other since we were eleven, and we have met twice. Funny, the English use of the word 'oldest' there, I have many friends who are older than Dawn, who is in fact the exact same age as me to within a month, but only British Karen has been my friend for longer than Dawn. We seem to be very different people, and yet our lives have followed quite similar paths in many ways. So today, I raise a glass to Dawn, Happy Birthday second oldest and most patient friend !

For some reason I realised yesterday that since I have been here I had never seen a horse on the road. I'm surprised I didn't think of this when Sleepy sent me that article about the Swiss bloke who was caught speeding in Ontario and who claimed that it was because of the dearth of goats.
Horses on the road can be a bloody nuisance, but they're a nuisance you get used to and yes, they do slow you down.
So what of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police? Do they not patrol the roads on horseback, er, no.
During the summer, Alex, Lou and Hazel did see a Vancouver Police officer on horseback in Stanley Park, but I'm not sure that does it.
I suppose the reason is twofold. Firstly, there's enough open land around here for horses not to have to be moved around on public roads and secondly, local motorists are completely thrown when they come across people who observe the speed limit and general road rules, so a horse would blow ALL of their diodes.

I was quite amused by the story of the father who had clocked up £250,000 in legal fees fighting Marlborough college for expelling his son. The son was chucked out for basically being a complete git, the father was convinced this was just a blind to cover up the school's wanting his predicted GCSE grades not to sully their figures. Oh lor, oh crikey, OBE as Billy Bunter used to say.
Now Mayhem was a state school, thus unlike Marlborough, "one of Britain's most expensive public schools", no-one had to pay to go there. And yet, didn't we play out this self same scenario over and over, just not in the courts. You wouldn't believe, unless you have been in any way involved in the education or health services, how parents will argue and bluster and tie up management time, arguing that their little git of a kid wasn't, and that (usually) he was being bullied by teachers. Yep. Like we had time to take out of our 60+ hour weeks to bully kids who were perfectly well-behaved, or the motivation to do so.

Year in, year out, I am surprised when the days are drawing in early. As though it had happened suddenly instead of little by little since the longest day. It helps me to leave thoughts of summer behind and look forward to the winter. It has rained in the night, giving much needed relief from the beautiful yet relentless Indian summer. The leaves are starting to turn on many of the trees and yet already we are crunching brown leaves underfoot from others. Autumn has arrived.