An autumn revelation- going outside on Sunday morning ( a few hours off from my torture), down a deciduous avenue of falling leaves on my bicycle with my love at my side (or behind me, or- more likely- in front. He doesn't like to be beaten). We go for breakfast in a cafe near the park- it is early, and only a few dog walkers and cyclists are there, swilling coffee in the expectant air. We eat, gossip. Marcin reads the paper and I read a draft of an essay I've been writing- the sky is deep blue and I suddenly like what I've written.

Outside, sitting tigetherat a table on the footpath, there is a middle-aged man and an old one. It is the old one that interests me. From where I sit, I can see his tan plastic hearing aid and liver-spotted hands. He has a pair of glasses with an extra set of black tinted frames clipped onto them, and he washes down a rainbow of pills with his orange juice. And I (with my juices still flowing, much good though it does me) I'm suddenly envious of him as I am, these days, of everyone who seems able to receive simple pleasures- he has gone past the tyrannies of youth- vanity, competition, the urge to achieve something out of the ordinary. He is free to reflect and to take full advantage of mornings like these under the plane trees , to fossick in the compost of his past for old joys, old conquests (I like the decomposition metaphor). Nobody expects much of him, except that he take his pills and not repeat himself too often. I begin to look forward to my retirement.