Jottings - November 1st

 This week has been one spent at home (I felt half-term holidays would make even our usual 'safe' places too busy), so my focus has been on the smaller things, from waking to sunshine through the bedroom window, to catching a brief red sunset or a glimpse of pink clouds at the end of the day. 

I've limited my walking to our suburban estate, staying on hard surfaces and avoiding the playing fields and wood because of rain and mud. Even the pavements were beautiful though, covered in leaves of differing colours and shapes. 

The rain, or the avoidance of it, added some more special moments to the week - a flock of rooks against a briefly clear sky, a burst of brightness as the sun set, and a lucky dash out to bring in laundry just before a torrential downpour. 

Around the house, apart from time spent delighting in the autumnal view from the kitchen window or thinking how pretty creamy beans looked in a maroon bowl, I've ticked a number of small jobs that have been lurking around for a while off the to-do list - which always feels like a major win - and hunted out and cooked another new dinner from the cookery books. 

This week's recipe was creamy garlic chicken from Pinch of Nom by Kate Allinson and Kay Featherstone; it tasted great, but was rather fiddly to make. I'll definitely cook it again, but change the method to make it simpler. Oh, and I added pasta which probably wasn't what the authors intended in a 'diet' book. 

Another foodie delight was a surprise handful of blackberries and raspberries from the allotment - just enough to brighten a breakfast.

One morning I spotted a surprise visitor in my greenhouse - a wren. Fortunately it flew away as soon as the door was opened but I've no idea how long it got inside, or how long it was there. Something had been eating the grapes, and digging up seedlings, but I'd assumed it was a mouse. Maybe the wren had been living inside for quite a while. I've seen it flitting round the garden since, so presumably it's no worse for its adventure.

A major contributor to this week's good mood has been the success of my planned clock change - or lack of it. I realised round about July that I'd not managed to adapt to the Spring clock-change. I was still living on GMT; getting up, and going to bed, an hour late. By then it didn't seem worth trying to get in line with the world, so I carried on as I was, and last weekend everyone re-set their clocks back to 'my' time. I'm now apparently waking earlier and going to sleep at a reasonable time, and all with no effort on my part.

The new lockdown announcement hasn't really come as a shock; mostly because I felt prepared for it. I'd expected a firebreak would be coming soon, and started this series of 'looking at the good side' posts in readiness for it. Apart from seeing family, it will have little effect on me, so, so far at least, I'm taking it all in my stride.