FOR a great many people, September is a time of new beginnings - far more so than the new year when we are all still in Christmas holiday mode, sitting around eating the remains of the chocolates and thinking it might be a good idea to resolve to diet once normal life kicks in again.

Come September, however, most of us have had our summer holiday and any moment now someone will observe that "the nights are beginning to draw in". As they do, there's the prospect of long evenings in which we could get on with all sorts of things; things we've thought needed doing, but not when the weather was fine and the evenings daylit.

Even more importantly, a new academic year begins. Some start school for the first time, others move on to junior or secondary schools. After the agony of waiting for GCSE results, 16-year-olds enter the non-uniform, more student than pupil, atmosphere of sixth form college. Teachers move to new posts and schools.

University and leaving home are only a few weeks away for many 18-year-olds and for adults of any age there are day and evening courses starting up in everything from computer literacy to lacemaking.

Now is definitely a better time to rethink our lives, even if education isn't involved.

Thinking dark evenings bring more free time, I've always made many more resolutions as autumn starts than I ever think up on January 1. This year will be no different (and the free time will be as elusive as ever).

For the first time, I took my own camera on holiday this year. I thought two keen photographers in the family talking f-stops and lens dimensions was enough and I've never bothered, but I inherited one of those point-and-press, does the thinking for you, jobs so I've had a go.

Now I plan to reject all but the best prints and put those, clearly labelled, in an album. Actually, I finished my first film a week ago and it neatly wound itself back after the last shot, but I haven't organised myself to remove it and do anything with it yet. Resolution one looks dodgy already.

Resolution two is to finish sorting out and labelling the best of several years' backlog of family photos taken by the others. Maybe two should come before one here, especially as neither of them plans to go digital in the near future and more will roll in.

Resolution three is to rescue the allotment from a summer's neglect as we coped with family problems. This one's going to be a joint effort and, having actually put it into words, it won't be the least bit surprising if we now have the wettest autumn on record. It's uncanny how many times we say, in the face of a good forecast: "We'll spend this morning/this afternoon/tomorrow at the allotment" and it's the cue for a downpour. On occasions, one of us has only needed to think about it for the clouds to gather.

As resolution three may be out of our hands, number four had better involve something indoors. No problem there. Keeping a house going is like threading beads with no knot on the bottom of the string. I could always go for the soaringly ambitious like having every room permanently clean, tidy and fit to be seen by visitors.

I could, but I've vowed to do that every autumn since heaven knows when and it's ended in a mad scramble to get the place decent for Christmas.

I know. This September, like the young Queen Victoria, I'll vow: "I will be good." I just won't specify at what.