Life . . . and all that.

On the left is Smudge aka Jarvis (gender unknown but he/she has a fat boy's face!) and Alfie, definitely a boy. Below, page bottom, is Tippy, also definitely a boy. They are not particularly frightened of me and will feed at my feet, but make a movement and they are gone like greased lightening - until you rattle the cat food tin!


The sky is the colour of a bowl of blue ribbons, left to fade for years on a windowsill in the sun. Some of the garden looks scalped where I have been clearing spent leaves in the border. Some of it looks blowsy like a raddled old tart propping up the bar in a seedy back-street pub. The vegetable plot looks like a wart hog has been let loose and has grubbed everything up. I spent a satisfying hour or so taking down the bean poles and the spent beans.

The hill to the river is in gloom now, the dessicated leaves have done with playing in the breeze and have settled for the night in the gullies beside the lane. Little chewed-up lengths of splintered hedgerow litter the lanes hereabouts as farmers tidy up their farms and smallholdings.

Whilst I was working, several ideas for blog posts came into my head, but now they have run willy-nilly from my brain and I am left with a head like an empty room with the door just slammed shut.

I probably meant to talk about books, about find a cookbook of Devon recipes I bought in 1986, and with a favourite much-made recipe in it for Apricot and Coriander Fruit Loaf which I have somehow managed to forget completely about over the years, when Life has got in the way. I plan to make one tomorrow.

I definitely meant to talk about kittens, and trying to tame them, and their blowing raspberries at me . . .

I should mention that I have blown the dust off my more than 3/4 finished Devon Village x-stitch and sewn a little of it this afternoon, and realized just why I laid it aside at summer's start - it was because I was a line adrift on the little bit I was working on today, and it has scrambled my brain completely trying to sort it (as it's beyond "putting right").

I could ponder how I actually enjoy - and look forward to (!!!) - ironing these days, as a satisfying job. It is something I dreaded and avoided when my children were small and there was a permanent ironing mountain the size of Ben Nevis.

I might add that I had the best night's sleep for a week last night, and what bliss it was to stretch out my tired body in a warm bed, and know that all my family were under the same roof and I didn't need to fret about them coming home safely.

As for tomorrow - well, it will involve processing some of the windfall apples I picked up today, along with some of the smaller Bramleys. A couple of pies, and perhaps some chutney . . .