Personal equinox

Leaving the office at 9.20 tonight (believe me, it's been worse) I had a curious sensation of the world shifting around me. I realised that it was dark and some part of me had been expecting the soft declining light of a summer evening; but that was no more. Autumn leaves curled in the gutters and for all the warmth of the evening, there was a haze in the night air that presaged future hours of scarves and warm coats, and altogether an air of expectancy that I've felt at around this time of year for the best part of two decades in or around Oxford. Unbidden, one word rose into my head and called me into a new quarter of my personal calendar:

Michaelmas.