keep watching the skies

It would appear that acorns are going to be in short supply (as are apples) this year. Evidently that means lucky so-and-sos with gardens may see jays turning up looking for food. As our garden is so tiny, we'll not be blessed but I did see one fly in front of the car yesterday crossing from an oak tree on one side of the road to one on the other side. Always a pleasure to see.

Despite it being a beautiful autumnal day yesterday, the rain settled in during the early evening.  Today's a particularly dreary one.  We should be on half term break this week but for some reason there's still another week to go. Mrs Dave and I got married in the October half term break so we usually get to celebrate our anniversary during that week - obviously not this year. Thirty years is a long time* and every single one before this has been during half term break. It's a bit weird. Anyway, we'll obviously be celebrating it a week later this year. A few days in London and an opportunity to go to the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition at the Tate and we've finally got tickets for War Horse so it should be fun.



A path on Trimley Marshes

 A friend has just dropped a bag of quinces off so I need to decide what to do with them - they need a little longer to ripen fully so I've got plenty of time to think about it. Last week we were foraging for sloes.  We managed to find some really ripe ones at Trimley Marshes (TM 274358). Mrs Dave soon had them in a litre of gin and another bottle of sloe gin begins its unique journey. I, however, found hundreds of rosehips so made another load of rosehip syrup. I'm quite enjoying getting out and foraging for foodstuffs - I think I'll book onto a course next year. I still have no plans to eat really disgusting looking fungi. I mean, whoever thought that something that looks like that might be edible?  "Hmm, I'm really starving hungry. I wonder if that clump of disgusting-looking jelly fungus will taste nice?" Actually, I often wonder what on earth some people were thinking when they decided to try eating some of the things that are (supposedly) edible. Snails, for example.

I was off ill for a couple of days last week - I went home feeling awful and went straight to bed. I had a couple of days off which allowed me to catch up on some reading. More of that another time.  I began to feel a bit better and decided to go for a walk by the sea to "get a bit of colour in my cheeks" as my dear old mum used to say. When I got to the front I stood by a sign and looked both ways:

So from exactly the same spot I had the hyperreal beauty of Maxfield Parrish to my left and the apocalyptic horror of John Martin to my right. It was a strange week. It didn't actually rain but it was a very foreboding sky. It was very much like the storm on the mainland here. Well, without the possibility of jumping into a swimming pool and getting sunburnt, of course.

Anyway, I'd better go and do some cooking or something useful. For a change.

* thank you, yes, I know that's bleeding obvious