On Sunday I saw a leaf shaped like Richard Nixon.

I walked straight past it and then a little something at the back of my brain said, “Hey, did that leaf look like Richard Nixon?”

So I came to a little stop and I stood there for a moment, wondering whether to go back and check. And I thought, “why not.”

So I swivelled my suitcase around, and threw my scarf, which had fallen loose, over my shoulder, and went back to look at the leaf, which, indeed, did look like Richard Nixon. But then there was another leaf next to it, too, that also looked like Richard Nixon. I began to realise that in fact it was not that these leaves, which were the latest in a long, ancient line of foliage, looked like Richard Nixon, but rather, that Richard Nixon, with his jowels and his bulbous schnozz, had looked like them, like some sort of strange cosplay. When I looked across the bridge under the oak tree I could see nothing but Richard Nixon. And it distracted me a little from the fact that it was Autumn, and that summer was over. It felt like a sort of arboreal, John Malkovich version of 1972, which actually didn’t seem like a bad place to be in at all.