"It's cold outside, there's no kind of atmosphere, I'm all alone, more or less."

I’ve been feeling lonely and blue and generally out of things lately. It’s because so many of my friends - purplerainbow, hathy_col and mettanna to say the least – are leaving for university tomorrow and everything’s happening all at once. I probably wouldn’t feel as blue if I were going too, but I’m still here. I know it’s only two weeks, it’s not forever, and of course I get to go away like everyone else, but it doesn’t stop me feeling oddly bereft during my last days at home.

So, in this sort of melancholy mood, I went outside this morning to get my bike out and ride into the village. I got a phone call yesterday from Tony asking if I could do a variety of shifts, and I took the lot on the reasoning that I wouldn’t be sitting at home moping if I was working, and I had a pleasant afternoon yesterday behind the counter with Tony and Niall. Today, I set out for work again wearing boots, ripped jeans and a black t-shirt, grabbed my bike and rode to the gate before stopping all of a sudden and rushing back for a jumper.

Because it is, finally, autumn. I was waiting impatiently for it, and it’s come. It was fresh and chilly outside today, whilst still bright and cloudlessly cold, and I enjoyed every moment of it, revelled in the chill from the open shop door, stared out of the window every chance I got and felt more awake and alive than I have in months. I am a creature of winter, it seems; I always feel somnolent and dazed from about April to September. It is lovely. Hopefully it will stay.

The shop has been quiet for the last two days. In an unexpected moment of poignancy, I walked round it removing the Berlitz, Time Out and Lonely Planet travel guides to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. I think the publishers are taking them back with no questions asked. Tony is getting ready for a book fair, leaving me to do the cash lifts. This of course resulted in my wandering about the village carrying two hundred pounds in coins. Wouldn’t be worth mugging me; I’d just bop them on the head with the cash.

I got home, ate my way through a Pot Noodle whilst muddling through a set of visa application forms, and then Sarah and Laura appeared promptly at half six bearing enough Google maps for a cartographers’ convention. We were going to Becky O’s for a takeaway and an impromptu birthday party, or at least, that was the plan. It was Sarah’s birthday yesterday. She’s nineteen. Someone I went to school with is nineteen. It’s a truly bizarre thought. Anyway, I gave her The Worst-Case-Scenario Survival Handbook for university, and she gave me a hug, once we’d made it to Becky’s without major navigational disaster.

In the end we wandered down to the cinema to see what was on. It was the opening night of Pride and Prejudice, which I had no objection to seeing, and I bought pick ‘n’ mix (I maintain that I am not too old for pick ‘n’ mix, while everyone else looks the other way), got tickets and then walked into a girl called Lucinda, whom I went to school with two years ago. A minor acquaintance, there with lots of other minor acquaintances, and given I was there with five other chemgeeks made it into a party. And while I was busy chatting away with all these people, Patrick suddenly appeared with his sister and one of her friends. Everyone I’ve ever known went to see Pride and Prejudice tonight, it seems. So I introduced him to the chemgeeks (Emma said later, “I’ve now met all your exes!”)

It was good to see them all. I think we would all have chatted away for hours if it weren’t for the, you know, film.

( Pride and Prejudice )

On my way out, Patrick yelled out, “Iona! A new fandom?”

I shushed him. As I observed a few minutes later, it’s so embarrassing, someone who knows all your secrets. Sarah thinks Patrick is rather cute. “And you let him get away!”

This time all the Merchants’ friends and acquaintances chatted for long enough to be politely thrown out. We promptly blocked up the entrance for a while, until we started drifting off into the night. Sarah, Fidan and I wanted ice-cream, so we walked across to McDonald’s, which was just closing as we got there. “The drive-through’s still open,” they told us. So we walked through the drive-through only to find it was closed, too. Despair!

Finally, we ended up off Lord Street, and Fidan and I ran out to KFC to get three ice-creams and a whole lot of fries. This was an entertainingly pseudo-drunken experience, culminating in our clambering back into the car moaning about how I must want to get us both killed and did Fidan know she was a useless excuse for a human being? I loved it, just sitting there in the dark and rain eating ice-cream and yelling at each other and laughing hysterically.

We made our way back the inland way, not daring to take the coastal road, and Sarah dropped me off. As I got out the car, Fidan got out too and stood facing me. “Iona,” she said seriously, “I know we haven’t always agreed with each other. And I’m never going to approve of some of the things you do, the way you live your life.

(Fidan is a devout Muslim; she disapproves of a lot of the choices I’ve made as they go against her faith.)

“But I want to wish you all the best and good luck in everything you do. Just… good luck.”

I hoped I wasn’t getting sniffly, or at least, not under a streetlight. “I want you to know,” I said, “that I have never enjoyed disagreeing with someone as much I’ve enjoyed disagreeing with you.”

And that’s true, true, and true again. Fidan starts at Liverpool next week. So do most of the people I met tonight. Patrick will be here, but he’s planning to spend Christmas in Vietnam. Everyone’s leaving, starting afresh, and if you’ve loved a place and its people, it’s never going to be easy.

So despite an absolutely lovely evening, I am feeling blue. I’m hoping for more cold weather tomorrow.