In the wake of the morning school run, I called into the local McDonald’s. Armed with a hot coffee, I went upstairs for extra warmth. It’s that time of year when being comfortable is a question of degree. Literally.
I had the room to myself, and, through a rectangle of light, I could see yellowing leaves outside clinging desperately to trees, only a storm’s breath away from relinquishing their grip forever.

The sky was blue but soon to concede to cloud.
Here, everything was in decay.
It wasn’t just those leaves on the trees; the music coming out of the speaker above me was already out of vogue; that very moment was passing into memory, present tense to past, and I was a machine that through wear and tear would at some point begin to break down. At a cellular level it was already underway, as I was sat there, an heir to debt and degeneration, just a storm’s breath away from relinquishing my grip.