This week, the mornings feel like California. The flat, dense blue sky that I saw in Pasadena, on a day early enough to watch the Rose Bowl flea market setting up.

Even though the sky is hazed at the edges, everything seems so clear that it’s unreal. The day you get new glasses – that’s what it’s like. Everything rendered in high definition by the curious light.

I guess September is the new July. Our seasons are shifting like the hottest part of the day, which seems to get later and later as I age.

Everyone’s ready for autumn. Shops are pushing Halloween, my Instagram is in Pumpkin Spice mode. I always think I’m a summer girl, but then I remember velvet coats and making cinnamon buns on the log burner. I’m in love with living, I suppose. It’s been useful for staying alive.

With no children, I only ever have a vague sense of that way of organising the year. I appreciate when there are fewer children to hit with my car and I notice the extra school buses past my window. But the seasons themselves are, to me, removed from the mundane order of uniforms, school plays, exams, half-terms. I get to observe a much earthlier calendar, dictated by berries, lambing time, the tides.

Too much introspection is probably not good for one’s happiness, but I do think too much remove from the business of LIVING can’t be good either. Living at an elemental level: the other face of ‘just existing’. We often use that phrase to mean living without joy, only physically living. But I think the time when I’m just existing is when I’m happiest. Drifting, being.

I do believe that the perspective gained from having a child is another kind of clarity, though. I know mothers who suddenly found their previously stressful job totally manageable after experiencing the chaos of parenting. Mothers who, previously self-conscious or squeamish, would now be unfazed by any embarrassment. That’s also an important perspective on living.

All I know is: I’m glad to have the time and space to think about these things.