I am very pleased to be able to tell you that I have had dried melon for my taxi picnic this evening, and jolly splendid it was too.
It is still jolly splendid because there is loads left, I can’t eat a whole melon in a single sitting even with all of the water taken out of it.
The blackberry pulp has dried into a single flat, slightly mis-shapen sheet. I cut it into strips and ate some, which was jolly good. Then I saved some for eating in picnics, like the melon, and shoved the rest in a Kilner jar full of brandy. This will make a very splendid blackberry brandy to go in gin cocktails at Christmas, and the soaked blackberry bits will be very interesting sweets, probably to mix into the Christmas chocolates, and the leftover bits for the mince pie mixture.
The dried lemons and limes are also brilliant, they look just like the sort of dried lemons you buy on Christmas markets. You hang those on strings and make your house look festive, flavouring them occasionally with some Christmas scented oil. I do not know what is in this but it smells very nice, I will be getting some more this year, along with some chocolate flavoured rum. I have never tried this, apart from once as a sample in a tiny glass on the Christmas markets, and it was so nice that we bought a bottle each for the children but forgot to get any for ourselves. The children were not living with us at the time, so we did not even manage to share it, but they all reported that it was wonderful, so this year we are jolly well going to get some more.
I can’t remember which Christmas market it was, we went to loads last year. I have an uncomfortable feeling that it was probably York.
Maybe we will be able to think of a good excuse to go there again this year. Christmas carols in the Cathedral perhaps.
Goodness, it is suddenly easy to tell that the summer is over.
It is really over, the timer has run out and the alarm has gone off. Summer is done.
My walks in the morning are no longer sunny and expansive. They are grey, and cool, and very muddy. The swifts are long gone now, and the bracken is beginning to brown. I put a jersey on this morning, for the first time in ages, underneath my large and very useful macintosh, and my boots are still drying out even now as I write. There are no tourists here any more, they have melted away like spilled wine on top of the wood burner, leaving just a slightly sticky residue in their wake. I am sitting in blissfully undisturbed solitude on the taxi rank, and feeling peaceful.
In short, we are fast heading towards the season when people really will want to purchase mince pies, and I have been contemplating this with the first early pangs of anxiety.
I rushed around today, getting the jobs done and making a hurried visit to the library, although the day had already been considerably brightened by the arrival of the brand new Cormoran Strike detective book. I will not read that all at once. I like those so much that I will make it last, we will see if I can stretch it out until JK Rowling, in her disguise as Robert Galbraith, has written the next one.
When I had finished I could finally turn my hand to my own seasonal efforts.
I have started painting the Advent calendars
Of course actually I am terribly late with this, I should have started them in June if I had the smallest hope of getting them finished in time without a terrific flap and probably a stiff neck and backache, but I have comforted myself with the thought that however late I am, I am not as late as last year. Last year I didn’t do anything until October, which was dreadful, and it all turned into a hasty panicked scramble at the last minute.
I discovered, rather to my surprise, that I have not taken any photographs of the children at all this year. Usually there are loads, and I have to choose carefully which photograph would look best behind which little window, but this year there are almost none. There is a photograph of the dogs, and several photographs of lakes and fells in various interesting states of weather, but that is more or less it.
It appears that I am a very dull photographer.
Fortunately there is still some year left.
I am sure I will manage to catch up with them before December.
