The last couple of mornings have brought those early autumnal damp chills into the air.
What I'm continuing to relish, however, is the morning light. I'm still waking up at about 6am and, currently, it is still pre-dawn twilight at that stage of the day. I'm finding a previously unsought joy in the gradual accumulation of visibility at that time.
Until recently, it's still been warm enough to sit out in the garden with a coffee and a cigarette and relish the stillness of the hour.
In some ways it has been a peculiar year for weather.
Winter was never really that cold. There was no snow and we didn't feel the need to put the heavy top sheet on the bed or the candlewick bedspread. However, we continued using the central heating well into June because it was still quite chill.
The first flush of spring arrived early and the first flowers had bloomed and gone before March was old. Then it got cold again. So cold, in fact, that it delayed many of the later spring blooms and caused some difficulties with the summer plants; for example, a number of pairs of shoots on the buddleja fused with the late frosts producing unnaturally thick branches.
The summer was warm but not particularly sunny. Rather, it was heavy, humid and torpid. But, on days when the cloud cover lifted, it was and bright with little heat haze to shroud the vistas over Liverpool Bay. And there were exceedingly few flies.
Now, the autumn seems to be arriving early with geese returning before their due date and a feeling that the central heating should be back on. I've already taken to wearing bedsocks.
Given that I'm up at the crack of dawn, I've also taken to slipping between the sheets at a much earlier hour than I was wont to do. If you'd told me, even a year ago, that 9pm would become my regular bedtime, I would have snorted contemptuously.
However, this is the regular sort of time that my little honey and I snuggle up to listen to Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince to us. I don't think that my view of the book has changed much from the first reading. It's alright but the narrative structure doesn't really grip.
My favourite of the six books so far remains Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The Tri-Wizard Tournament with its three tasks gives the book a satisfying structure and the twist at the end is quite stunning. The second trailer for the film, which is due out this November, has just been released and it looks amazing. I'm really looking forwards to it.
I've also just finished listening to a very satisfying version of Alain Fournier's Le Grand Meulnes on Radio 4's Classic Serial and I've been catching the Book at Bedtime rendition of Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac thanks to radio on demand through the Internet.
Preparation of the music room for decorating continues apace. All we need to do now is to complete the filling of cracks and holes before the cleaning and then the lining paper can be hung. So far, we are well on track for being able to paint during the week's holiday that I have planned in October.