Yet again a piece of writing written in the context of my progressive, but maybe slow, progress through “Creative Screenwriter” a book which is full of “exercises to expand your craft” that I have been following, hoping to expand in more ways than one, partly because my pyjamas are too big for me and keep falling down as I’m washing up – something that caused one of my family, only yesterday, to ask me if I needed a pee as I struggled with crossed legs and soapy hands – and partly because I want to expand for expand’s sake and as a result now have something I could post in the Bitsnbobs November series of posts in which, for reasons of creative differentiation and divergence, I have deemed it necessary that the titles (one of which you are reading) a) must be longer, by at least one word, than the content of the post itself (which you may read when you get through this if I haven’t already tried and tested your patience to such a degree that you give up) and, b) must be accompanied by a photo that has some link, direct or inferred, with fish, fishy, aquatic or such like, bearing in mind a )that ‘fish and chips’ is not obligatory but just numerically prominent by virtue of chance plain and simple and b) my pyjamas REALLY are too big and cause me a fair mount of embarrassment as I walk about; so if you are reading this wondering what to get me for Christmas (something I admit is very unlikely but one has to try) then you won’t go far wrong if you choose sleep wear that is tight(ish) fluffy and striped.

It’s early morning and I’m driving to work. Mostly the village is still sleeping and I don’t meet anyone; even if someone were up and about they would be half hidden in the November mists that have settled on the hill; it will only be later that the sun is strong enough to frighten it into the valleys. For now I marvel at the shafts of pale creamy light that stream through the hurrying and changing leaves, and though I know every thing is yellow and orange except the red maples, the world seems to be in black and white.

At the edge of the forest the road bends suddenly to the left and swings out into the open; there is a meadow on one side and an abandoned farm on the other. Because the mist is thinner here it’s a place that makes me think of ghosts, Halloween is still only a week old after all, so I am startled when a hundred or so starlings fly up from the dew heavy grass.

My passing disturbs them, their rising disturbs me, and for a moment they fly in unison alongside, our speed and destiny the same, and then they turn as one and swoop away into the secure branches of a solitary apple tree.

The air is once again still and the only thing moving is myself, and the swirling tendrils of troubled mist that gather and hide everything in secret once again.