What season is it?

I have lost a sense of time. Not the hours in the day - and my goodness they slip away quicker than I can check a clock face - and not the days, because at some point the world sinks into darkness and my eyes close. I know the difference between day and night. Not that time, but the time that surrounds me, that is in soil and trees, that tells me when things grow, change, fall away, drop to the ground. People tell me it's coming winter, but the centigrade flashes 33 at the ferryside and the wind is warm enough to make you wish you wore one layer less of clothing.

It's disorienting, and a bit distressing, this out of step. I feel not all is right with the world. I'm not exactly a farm girl, and I don't have much sympathy with hunting country folk, not since one held a fist at my head, but I miss the way I took the kids past the farm on the way home. Maybe once a fortnight, April to October, we'd collect a wheelbarrow, look over the hedges to find the forks stuck in the ground, and know we'd found the signpost for potatoes.

I'm not alone. As we gaze at the fat round red tomatoes and wonder aloud whether lychees have finished for the season, the children ask if the blackberries are done. I don't answer. I bite my lip and mourn the damsons. And the jam making. And the fallen apples in the orchard. Even the ritual midnight pan burning, when I over reach myself with the chutney wonder of the day; when I thought, just one more experiment, this time with cloves and nutmeg.

I miss all that. Out here, on the limb of an island with an elbow poking into a China sea, I have no sense when apples ripen, or when the baking potatoes are best. I am cut off, left out. Lost. I look for replacements, because there are plenty. We have ripe round pomellos, bananas, pears like a fragrant ice sorbet held in shape by a pale green skin. We have imported California plums, kiwi, and grapes from I don't know where. But I don't have late summer raspberries, orchard apples, and the expectation of sharp frosted sprouts. I don't look at a calendar and count, sweetcorn, parsnips, cabbage. And I don't have Squirrel climbing fruit trees, Shark with red rubbed lips, and Tiger, with soil under her fingernails.