Pollok Country Park, Glasgow: Having lived on Orkney for five years, I’d forgotten about the season’s mellow fruitfulness

After five years in Orkney, my partner and I have moved “sooth” – that is, to the Scottish mainland. There’s a lot to get used to, not least carrying our house keys again. But what has caught me by surprise is the sense of having rediscovered a whole season.

I’d forgotten about autumn, you see. No trees up north. Or what few hardy souls brave the gales lose their foliage to the wind in a single afternoon. Not so in our new street in Glasgow, where leaves of scarlet, tan, lemon and rust amass in knee-high banks and block the drains. The neighbours complain, but to us it is still novel.