This has been quite a big week in my life. With a view to oft considered retirement, I finally gave notice of intention to leave my place of employment. Having received this shocking news, I fielded a number of questions. One or two of them were, frankly, silly if taken literally i.e. ‘but what will you do?’ I think we only need to look back at some of the weasels on this blog to answer that one: reading, writing, walking, crafts, foraging, visiting and so forth. For a start, four chickens and a cat called Poodle, who reside close to Avignon, are expecting me to rock up and look after their needs for a while at the end of November.

Further, there is stuff I don’t generally write about. For example, a new and long awaited grandchild arriving imminently in the Bromley environs. If I make an extra special effort to behave ‘normally’ for metropolitan parents, I might be allowed to visit and lend an eager hand or two. Further, I do quite a lot of proofreading for all sorts of people. For the last year, I’ve worked from a grand distance with an academic in Venice. To be fair, I once met Francesco in real life so I know how our links were forged. On the other hand, random and varied requests drop into my Hotmail account from folk I’ve never met and I’m left wondering how they ever found an eccentric in Dorset.

Not long ago, I proofed a piece of research sponsored by Microsoft on a virtual hand to be used in micro-surgery. How did that happen? And for two or three years, I was very big in Indonesia: it seemed that no-one could publish anything over there that hadn’t been overseen by yours truly. There was a ghastly incident when a couple of them came to Bournemouth and wanted to meet. Being a friendly type, I invited them to dinner chez moi. I wrote beforehand to enquire whether chicken was suitable and, on them replying in the affirmative, I added a touch of the old French cuisine by means of a coq au vin. I’d invested in some really good wine to drink which was subsequently turned down owing to the fact it was booze. No worries – all the more for mine host. The cooking wine was deemed ok as the alcohol had been baked away. However, I’d made the culinary mistake of adding bacon. Omelettes all round then.

So when people ask ‘what will you do?’ perhaps that’s not the end of the sentence. Perhaps they really mean, ‘what will you do for money?’ Good point. Panic? The better questions have been, ‘are you having a party?’ Or, for folk that know the answer to that, ‘where will the party be?’ I’ve worked in my current place of employment for sixteen years and I’ve already had two leaving parties. About nine years ago, I took the sabbatical year which, in truth, changed my life for ‘twas then that I found France and all my friends who still live there; or who, like dear Beverley, came home to remain important to me. On another occasion, they sacked me and I was forced into hateful exile on the road between Redruth and Penryn. Fortunately, I escaped back to Provence after six dreadful months. And even more fortuitously, my lovely current manager invited me back into the academic fold from whence I will soon depart.

And now there is news of a flood. Following Brexit, I awoke to an interminable beating in my right ear: pulsatile tinnitus. They say it’s due to a mobile blood vessel and advise ‘mindfulness’. I say it’s the result of an unexpected shock: the shock of discovering that, having spent years supporting people with ‘differences’, and maintaining an ethos of equality with all, discovering that at least half of the population are inordinately stupid. Last night, lightening lit up the house. Thunder crashed causing distress to anyone who doesn’t welcome a new sort of noise in the middle of the night. And there was quite a bit of rain.

My place of employment has been flooded to the extent that I must meet the last of new students in a long career in the boiler room. Doubtless, we will conduct our business by pencil and paper if not slate and chalk. Who cares – their needs remain paramount

I write continuously: it’s like a disease that I’ve been infected with since primary school days. It doesn’t matter if no-one reads it – well, it does really but, if you’re a scribe, you just keep going. Every now and then someone says they like what you’ve done. Mostly, they ignore you. Tim Pepin, to my knowledge, never read anything I’d put on paper. Nonetheless, two offices down from me at work, he somehow discovered that I wanted to publish a book about life in Provence. I have no idea how that happened. My job had little to do with his.

My book was nearly finished but, like everything else I’d written, I thought nothing would come of it. Tim took the project in hand – I didn’t even know it was a project. He formatted my book – what does that mean? He made a cover – extended online discussions regarding the apposite shade of green. Then, unexpectedly, he sent me an email to say the book was published on Amazon.

I wanted to pay him. He didn’t want money. I insisted and he asked for a Terry’s chocolate orange. I purchased a basket full of chocolate oranges and hid ten pound notes within. He was furious, but Felix had just been born so I was able to persuade him to buy something for his son.

I don’t know who Tim was. When you talk to others, he seems like some being that’s been temporarily placed amongst us to move things on. Today, I felt as if he’d arranged his own funeral. It was disturbing but with Tim, you never knew when it was time to be serious.

This time last year, I was busy concocting personalised alcoholic Christmas gifts: specifically, sloe gin and blackberry brandy. The presents were well received even if folk fell over after half a teaspoon of the brandy. They soon re-grouped and decided to tone it down. With champagne. Alternatively, the gin was deemed delicious and left imbibers in a pleasant, if slightly soporific state of well-being.

This year sees a bumper crop of blackberries; there’s no stopping them and hedgerows have been lined for the last three weeks by Tupperware toting foragers. No waiting for a never-to-arrive frost in this mild part of the world. My blackberry brandy and blackberry vodka have been suitably shaken every day for a fortnight. The ruby red potency sits alongside another newcomer – damson brandy. I foraged the damsons locally by attacking a small child who’d been released from Sports Direct for the day to flog plastic bagfuls of fruit outside her aunt’s bungalow on something worse than a zero hours contract. ‘My cousins have been allowed to go inside due to the heat’, she cried plaintively. ‘Do I care, small person?’

Yesterday, I went with my friend  to Longham Lakes in search of sloes. S was looking, rather late in the day in my opinion, for blackberries. S doesn’t do brandy. At ten past nine in the morning, I’d already tried her blackberry wine. It goes down well after a Sainsbury’s sausage sandwich and I can see why her husband had brandished the whip and sent her off to reap this year’s provisions. Last year, Longham Lakes was abundant in sloes. This year, nothing so I was forced to help her with the blackberry harvest and save her another beating. And this is why, today, I went to Wareham Walls.

Many years ago, in a time we never mention, I harvested my first crop of sloes on Wareham Walls. I didn’t even know what they were and was forced to take a late-in-the-year trip to France in order to purchase gin. Why? Who knows. Now we just get it from Lidl. To this day, I can see the precise location of those sloes. Well, let me tell you: not only are there no sloes, the bloody bush has disappeared.

No problem. This is September in Dorset and the month is outdoing itself in terms of last minute heat and sunshine. In February, these water meadows will be flooded beyond recognition. Today, it’s simply glorious – a pleasure to be part of it all. And what I really like is the conversation with strangers.

In truth, I pass a great deal of my life in awareness of the fact that no-one has a clue what I’m talking about. And if they do know, they mostly don’t understand my choice of topic. Not today. Today, ambushing total strangers with questions relating to my search for sloes, not only did a single person fail to brush me aside, they all had an input to the conundrum.

I met people who had been stressfully commissioned by their son to provide 100 miniature bottles of sloe gin to act as favours at his wedding. Favours? I’d say it was a favour to get invited. It reminded me of those horrendous birthday parties in the past where visitors were returned home with exotic goodie bags and I gave away a piece of cake wrapped in a serviette. Wedding parents were in despair: they’d travelled over from Swanage where Ballard Down is, apparently, suffering a dearth of sloes.

Nancy and Joy had come from Weymouth. Can you believe that? No wonder there’s no bloody sloes on Wareham Walls if folk are coming that far on safari. Nancy was troubled because she’s seen a train on the other side of the river. How can that be? I helpfully pointed out that Wareham station is on the other side of the river. Nancy said she’d lost her bearings. Get out more, Nancy.

I left the walls and wandered into who-knows-where. Places I’ve never been: wide open spaces and ancient earthworks. Cows sufficiently far away not to cause alarm, but large fresh pats to make me wonder what or who else was in the vicinity. And never a sloe in sight. I walked for two and a half hours and it was sublime. The sun beat down, the midges hovered and the heron that I saw earlier sat soaking the warmth for so long that he was in exactly the same place when I returned sloeless.

I live by the water and it occurred to me that sloes might be found nearer to home. Exhausted, I dragged myself around the nature reserve where I met Jean. ‘I’m looking for sloes’, I said. And Jean tells me that not only is it a bad year for sloes, but that other fruit is a non-starter. Last year, Jean had more pears than she knew what to do with. This year, she’s hardly managed a plastic bag of fruit.

And if that wasn’t enough bad news, the apples are rotting on the trees, both in her garden and here on the reserve where I took this photo. Actually, all of these photos were taken today. Even if it’s a bad year for sloes, and even though no-one’s getting gin for Christmas, they do illustrate what else a September in Dorset is offering.

And just in case you think I’m unsatisfied with my lot, here’s a view of where I live taken from the water this morning. Who needs sloes – we have the brandy.