Winter's coming...

It’s a clear but cold day. The dogs and I have just been to the park to blow away the sofa cobwebs. I’ve been wearing a jumper this last week or so but the weather’s been relatively mild, today however, I needed a coat and scarf on our walk, winter is coming…

(Although depending on which reports you read/watch it’s going to a warm, wet winter or it’s going to be a freezing cold winter!)

As much as I like meeting friends and other dogs on our walks, I like it when it’s just us because I can switch off and daydream. The park is looking beautiful; the ground is covered in acorn husks and there are big piles of fallen leaves in various shades of red, brown and gold, that even at 34 I can’t help but kick through. The only other beings we saw were squirrels (being harassed by Pluto and Bess) stocking up their winter larder, and the crows ‘cawing’ and hopping about drunkenly. Apart from that it was just us: the dogs chasing each other – or the squirrels – and me relaxed and lost in thought.

Now we’re back in the warm which is nice but I suspect that one of the dogs has been at the chicken feed because someone has vile wind and it’s not me. My peaceful reverie is over to be replaced with the worry that one of them now has a tummy ache…

I’m off out this evening to help celebrate a friend’s birthday. He specifically said no presents but we’re giving him a jar of homemade marmalade! The marmalade turned out to be gorgeous and we’ve already received several requests for jars.

Tomorrow my mum is coming over for tea and to look at the ‘official’ wedding photos in case there are any she would like a copy of. I’m making hazelnut brownies, which could go either way. I either make great cakes or lousy cakes – I’ve yet to discover a middle ground. We also need to pick up a storage chest we’ve bought for the garden. Our small shed is literally bursting at the seams, so we’ve bought something to store all the chicken stuff in, and we should still have some room over left for pots. No doubt we’ll take the opportunity to do a garden tidy up before winter sets in. We should be doing some planting at this time of year, but with us desperate to move by the end of the year/very beginning of next, we don’t really want to commit to working hard to plant lots of seeds that we can’t nurture and subsequently harvest. We’re in vegetable limbo!

A new gadget arrived today. It’s a stand-by plug set and remote control. You plug in all the stuff you don’t want on stand-by (but which might be awkward to get to) into a special plug and then when you want to switch everything off, you just use the remote control – from up to 30 feet away! No more scrabbling around on hands and knees… unless you want to and that’s entirely your own business…

Right, I need try and work out how my new MP3 player works. As with everything that arrives in this house with a set of instructions, I may end up giving it to my wife with a plaintive look and a request for her to please help before I end up throwing it out of the nearest window…