non-autumn colours

I obviously like autumn as much as the next person (probably slightly more as I'm keener on the cold than most) but don't usually go too mental for flittering leaveses in all their browny-orangey-yellowy autumnality; I've started indicating a distinct preference for indirect natural light rather than attempting to cope with the burnt highlights and excessive cheesey reds of low-angle sunlight over-accentuating the yellowy-orangey-browniness. Every now and then a nice zombie-coloured or interestingly pale leaf turns up, quite often on top of the nice greeny moss on top of the nice mossy wall besides the nice Water of Leith underneath the thinning canopy of still-living leaves where the shadowy light can be used to emphasise the blueness. This one was loafing in the leaf litter besides the path through the Meadows like the upturned palm of a giant vampire gecko.

I usually have very little confidence in statements such as "I'm leaving at half three today", usually because of boss-people wandering into shot and blocking all attempts to wrap up what I'm doing without starting anything else. However, it was the end of our working month yesterday which requires boss-people to go through out time/attendance system records over the next few days to check for anomalies and sign off our times to HR. In a remarkable turn of efficiency (possibly due to the talky half the department being off on a team-building day today) this was getting done today with the result that boss-person saw my increasingly large clump of carried-forward (any time above the arbitrary and frankly unrealistic limit imposed by the system has to be manually added back in each month) excess time. "What are you going to do about that?" was easily answered with "leave at half three?"; to my surprise I was actively encouraged to leave when half past three arrived. I'll have to make a little miniature whiteboard out of some cardboard and clingfilm and display the current exces-time total on the edge of my monitor in the hope that this sort of leaving-at-a-reasonable-time behaviour can be continued. I celebrated the extra time available by mowing the grass this evening; the second time it's been cut this year and hopefully the last cutting it will require until the next.