A week is a long time

Change is all around us and the pace seems to be accelerating. Everything is uncertain. Talking politics? No, nature. For even this seems to be slightly more chaotic just now.

Just a week ago my early morning walks were serenely calm with sunrise and mists floating over the landscape.

There haven't been any notable extremes in either temperature or wind and yet in the last week most of the autumn colour has disappeared, seemingly overnight. Just a week ago the beech trees were in their full glory and looked set to continue for a while.

This morning, at about the same time and the same place, it's all gone – well nearly. The trees are largely bare and the colour has disappeared.

I'm not suggesting anything unexpected has happened; it is after all late November which by most peoples reckoning is the end of Autumn. It's just that the change seems sudden, or maybe faster than some years. We missed out on Spring this year, going straight from the chill of the beast from the east to high Summer, or so it seemed, so maybe this is the continuation of that, with Winter having blown in from the North Sea. Or maybe not.

On the basis of last week's chaos in the world of politics and today's position, we simply don't know. It might be warm and sunny by the weekend or it might be snowing – in both the political and natural worlds. We can be fairly sure though that the leaves won't be back on the trees, at least not until after next March.