Fresher's Week by Nicky Browne

It is that time again. The leaves are turning, there’s the smell of woodsmoke in the air, mornings are chilly and there are conkers on the trees.  Kids have been back to school for a while, but now it is the turn of university students who are buying new pens and pads and reorganising their possessions in barren university rooms even as I write. The freshers, wide eyed and soon to be legless, are staggering around intoxicated by their new found freedom from Mum and Dad as well as by anything else they can buy on offer in the student bar.  

For many years I’ve hauled my offspring’s motley bin bagged possessions around the UK from one bastion of learning to another. The scent of autumn brings with it the flavour of apples, blackberries and loss; I miss them when they are away.  But  the turn of the year also brings with it a certain thrill, the hopeful sense of a new term starting for me as well as for them. This is my new year, my time for new resolutions and new projects. I have taken my youngest son back to uni for his final year. Other family members are knuckling down to their jobs, their A levels, their first year teaching. Our house thrums with workmanlike activity and calm purpose. I have an overwhelming urge to buy a new pencil case, declutter my office, reorganise my life and start a new novel.

I have been fortunate to begin this new season and my new year by joining the ranks of the Author’s Electric, an opportunity for which I’m grateful. Even as I write this I can feel the excitement building. I haven’t self published before or written a novel for adults but with the shortening of the days I feel like everything is possible. I am a fresher again, intoxicated by new found freedom and the chance to write new things. I never get anything much done in the Summer but the Autumn is another story and to read it watch this space!