Summer is over.

View from our home for the last three weeks.
Traverse City, USA.

I write this from Gate M11, Terminal 5, Chicago O'Hare Airport. I am about to board an overnight flight to London. We've just had an excellent day in the company of Pauly, Dan, and Pauly's new girlfriend, Ashley.  Pauly and Ashley have been together for a little over four months.  In Pauly years (like dog years, where one year equals seven human years), that counts as a long term relationship.  We ended the day on the beach (I had no idea Chicago had beaches), undoubtedly the last day on a beach for some time.  


It is the end of our three and a half week trip to the US.  Good times with Greg, Carrie, Ethan and Lauren.  Mornings enjoying al fresco coffee, afternoons on the beach, evenings eating out on the deck and shooting hoops in the yard.  A couple of nights ago Carrie stepped out on to the porch and commented that 'fall was in the air'.  The last few days have indeed ended in distinctly autumnal evenings. The mornings are ever so slightly cooler and the sunlight seems subtly different.  For three and a half weeks I have worn nothing more than shorts, a t-shirt and flip flops.  Now I am back in jeans and trainers. Tomorrow we land at Heathrow, and I'll probably put a jumper on.  By Tuesday I will be back in work, in a suit.  


Holidays are finished. Autumn is on its way.  I can't help thinking that summer is over.  And that makes me feel sad.