Saturday

'Jam and Jerusalem' roses have a late blossoming as the cold creeps down from the North.  Waking up this morning to a grey raining mood, mists hanging heavy in the distance. The pigeons line the crest of the church roof, like something out of Hitchcock's 'Birds'. 

You know when winter is coming when strange things happen, a rat dying peacefully in the sun in the garden, a few days ago.  Sad, but rats always appear when the cold starts to bite, and this one had obviously been poisoned.  I saw another one on the grass verge as I walked Lucy, you have to be so careful when poison has been put down.

What else, well a creature in the garden disturbed Lucy the other night, she stares out of the french windows in the kitchen at night looking for night intruders.  We think it was a badger, though it could have been a fox, for having jumped down into the garden from the church next door, it had to dig itself out under the front fence, digging a large hole.

Bonfire night tomorrow, though it is quiet in the village, I remember as a child heating baked potatoes in the tin box that Smith crisps came in, and Catherine Wheels tied to the trees that took such a long time to whizz.  Nowadays it is all bangs and rockets whizzing up to the sky.  When my daughter was young we would have a bonfire in our back garden, with the three boys from next door,  tomato soup, sausages/onions in rolls and I am sure some special curry dish that Jean would make.