The start of term, a return from holidays: mid-autumn, with its fat old moon and promise of winter at last, should be a time for new beginnings.
In a way it is, but at the moment for me it seems to be the season for endings. I have been to an unusual number of parties already this month, and almost all have been to say goodbye to people who have been here for many years - some all their lives - and for various reasons are moving on. I will miss them.
I went the other way and - while friends hiked around Hawaii, lolled in the Jura or booked international movers and Trading Post listings for their marginally used furniture - spent what seemed the whole of the post-handover summer looking for a new little cupboard to live in, which would effectively lock me into a further year or two in the SAR.
Some people manage to find a flat without fuss, but I have discovered I am not one of them. Even finding something livable took three weeks, one gazumping (I signed the lease but when the landlord was just five minutes away from putting his own mark on the document he was paged by another agent whose client was, unbidden, offering 15 per cent more), 16 glasses of wine and at least seven estate agents.
The first agent I tried to engage did not (after I had confided my budget) look up from his terminal. He looked as if he was being frightfully efficient. But I have had a chief editor (not, I emphasise, on this newspaper) who played computer solitaire all day (he pretended he was doing spreadsheets and we never let on that his windows reflected his screen with impressive clarity) and I know the signs.
The favourite word of my second agent was 'imagine'. I had this whole week where I spent all my spare time following Priscilla (name changed to protect the imaginative) as she tripped around Sheung Wan in her plastic sandals, rattling her keys and walking more slowly than anyone else on the street. We would climb up too many floors of one of those old buildings that had captured the interest of both me and my bank account, and she would suddenly stop, key in latch, and say: 'Close your eyes.