Autumn comes with such surprising speed.

I love days like this.

I went down to the beach in town today and the whole bay was a seething mass of chaos and white foam. Massive waves driven in off the Pentland firth by a strong south easterly were just smashing into the shore with such force I could feel the rumble coming up through the bones in my legs.

The wind was thick with salt spray and disgruntled gulls who, having been ousted from their favourite spot on the wave-line had nothing better to do that mill around above the sea-wall like bored teenagers, squawking, squabbling and occasionally swooping down to pick at rubbish.

Some hardy people were being blown up and down the shore, but most sensible people stayed camped out in their cars. Summer tends to breed a kind of complacency in people about the weather and the forces of nature that Autumn comes to smash away, so a brisk wind and drop of a few degrees is christened "wild" weather by a couple of people in the bank. In just a few short weeks, as the world turns and the days darken, a day like this will be "warm and windy" and by April will be a sign that Summer is back on the way.

It's the wildness in the sky and sea that I love so much, the free power of it all as the world tumbles around itself. It is a time of change, a turbulent passage from one season to the next where everything is shuffled ready for the next hand, there is a charged excitement just in one short walk that reminds you how good it is to be alive, how beautiful every breath you take, every wind-blown leaf in the sky can be.

The air is sweet and fresh and clear, and full of thousands, no, millions of different noises, from high pitched rushing through trees to the gut-deep thrum as it forces itself past buildings, the clang and chime of the rigging on boast tapping against masts or the creak from the frames of old houses. the clank of a gate carelessly left ajar or the fading in and out of everyday noises as they are blown around in the storm.

The world is in chaos, every wave utterly different as it foams and crumbles up the shore but part of a larger pattern of advancing lines that are speeding towards the land. Leaves and rubbish are sucked in to spinning dances performed illicitly in the lees of walls, dragging any small debris in to the madly whirling tune while tress become shivering, rocking giants, moshing to their own exclusive beat, all slightly out of time with each other.

There is so much detail we miss just because we don't listen, or look.

So if it's windy and wild where you are now, I really recommend you wrap up warm and go for a walk.

If you're like me, you wont regret it.