Tomatoes, Daisies, Movies, and Reading Schemes (ugh!) - Enid Richemont

It's early Autumn, or, if you prefer, late summer, and in my very peaceful part of North London, there's a kind of golden silence which seeps into my head. The very last of my huge crop of tomatoes remains to be picked, and this morning I gathered an unexpectedly large bunch of runner beans - all this richness from a small suburban garden. This time of year feels like a kind of dream time through which I wander almost mindlessly. Soon there will be the first breaths of the winter to come, and I love that - it's thrilling. I am not a summer person.

Recently I found myself picking lawn daisies just before their decapitation by lawn mower - these lovely little things always come back. I haven't picked daisies since making daisy chains with my kids and my grandchildren, and I suddenly wanted to - they are so sweet.

The movie based on one of my books has now progressed to the stage of location and actually filming, and I will be shown the first images in ten days time. It is an extraordinary experience to have characters who until now only existed inside my head becoming 'real'. What will be even more extraordinary will be the 21st century manifestation of the two eleven year old girls who featured in the original story - extraordinary because they were real girls at the time, now adults and with children of their own. There were no phones in the original story, but now there are, among so many other small but significant changes and updates. The contemporary screenplay, which I wrote a couple of years ago, has now been tweaked and expanded. This is a constantly evolving process, with so many new voices, and I love it - it's so alive.

My very little book featuring a little boy called Ahmed and his relationship with an alien, is out at last, the original story tweaked and diminished in order to fit into current (and unwelcome) reading schemes. The illustrations are fun, though, and I've always loved the idea that teachers are unfazed by differences - even boys who are green and have tentacles.

At present I'm reading Peter Ackroyd's THE CLERKENWELL TALES, based on Chaucer's THE CANTERBURY TALES. The local historical details are fascinating, and obviously, being Ackroyd, well-researched. The characters in the story weren't aware that what they thought of as the present would one day be re-constructed as the long-distant past - to them, it was here and now and immediate. When I first wrote the novel that's turning into a film, I, too, was living in the here and now, and everything was fresh and new, as it always is in the present, but one day, even 2017 will, in its turn, become history, along with the wimples and fetishes of the 13th century, as everything eventually does. Quite a chastening thought.