I love Lottie most during a beautiful weekend snatched by autumn from summer. I was nonchalantly sitting in my bedroom keeping myself to myself when the earth moved, my chair wobbled, pictures swung and the bed rocked.

I can imagine the headline, earthquake in Skopje, Brighton man survives,.. with chaos and mayhem all around, sirens sounding, an amazing Argus scoop. Well there were no dramatic headlines, no photos to match the Chilean miners emerging from the rubble, no clusters of cameras flashing outside the hotel, no CNN reporter reading cliché after cliché. 3.1 on the Richter scale, more than a sneeze but less than a trailer of manure dropped on Lottie.

Trapped this week, not in a mine but in Macedonia, I dream of Lottie, beautiful, bountiful and golden brown, waiting to be covered in manure.

How much more exciting it would have been to double dig with Lottie, to put in the autumn onions, to sow the broad beans, pick the last fruit of summer and read Keats as he makes the earth and heavens resonate to his melodies.

In September, 1819, Keats wrote: 'How beautiful the season is now--How fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather--Dian skies--I never liked stubble-fields so much as now--Aye better than the chilly green of the spring. Somehow, a stubble-field looks warm--in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it.' Keats then composed the Ode To Autumn (see Ode to Autumn Lottie).

The earthiness of autumn, the smelliness of damp leaves, the waning sun and the yellowing light have not yet been snatched away by the cold winds and brief days that are too short to spend with Lottie.

There are still seeds to save, soil to turn, and fruit trees to feed for future harvests.

And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

It is late, but not too late. Unlike the mad Hatter,or CNN, there is no need to hurry everywhere. We can still move the earth, dig the manure, savouring the fruits of summer, while repaying Lottie’s endless labours of love. There are no CNN reporters here for instant news, as the earth is moved and winter comes slowly but surely.