Autumn is traditionally the time of year in England when everyone gets very busy.
Most discretionary activities tail off about mid-June, go into stasis for July and August, and ramp up again with a roar on September 1st.
It's a season that makes you energetic - the tang of winter in the air, the exhilarating beauty of the trees wherever you turn, the sense that the year is running out, but there's still time to catch it.
I would very much like to be writing - the Grand Tour that was our summer holiday is over, Tiggi has been dispatched to Cambridge and seems likely to stay there, Christmas planning is not yet upon us. The household is orderly and more or less clean; the bills are paid; there are no Major Feasts of the church.
But because of the Great Autumn Flurry, I am completely run off my feet.
We have our new premises at Sumpter Yard to transform from a room with weed-strewn yard attached, into a little theatre. This alone would be a delightful if time-consuming project. Unfortunately I am also directing a play at Dunstable Little Theatre, which would also be fun on its own. It is not a case of A Lot of What You Fancy does you good, cos it doesn't.
I have committed to directing my Faustus play in March, which means I ought to be working on the next draft. Also I have found a short story which I thought I might slip into a competition, just for the hell of it. But there's no time for either. Unless I stop work, in which case I could not afford to live.
Sooner or later, I will have to make a decision, and something will have to go, or my obit will read "once thought promising..."