A pocketful of autumn…

Even on the tarmac of a dingy backwater, behind shops selling plastic gnomes and three packs of scissors for a pound, you can find beauty. I’ve not been looking too hard at what surrounds me for a while and beauty is easily missed. I don’t know why I’ve had my eyes closed a little. Maybe I’ve become jaded, but I’m not finding as much wonder in the world as I used to.

There was a time where I went out of my way to be cynical and hard in my dealings. These days I try very had to work against my natural cynicism (or is it learnt?) and fight off my instinct to bite. It isn’t very easy, I’m still often there with the wilting remark and pointed jibe. Of course it’s all Rick Blaine’s fault, hard bitten rake and roué that he was, but even Rick turned out to be a good guy with a heart in the fog of the airport.

“We’ll always have Paris.”

Perhaps, that’s it. Perhaps I’ve been lost in the fog and forgotten just how much Paris there is all around us; like these beautiful autumn leaves. They’re fit to grace the boulevard of the autumnal Champs-Élysées aren’t they? What a wonderful life it can be if you only look - and look, I found a pocketful of autumn blown into a concrete corner on the tarmac behind the pound shop. Just look at all those colours in a patch of urban wilderness for anyone to see if only we can open our eyes.