I pottered around this morning; doing some washing, doing some cleaning, reading some more of Part Four, and around noon, Emma arrived. We had a nice lunch with bread and cheese olives, and houmous, and then we went out for a walk. At Woodstock we managed to find possibly the last parking space in town and wandered the town, checking out the antique shops – such nice things – before walking to the other side of the village to take the public footpath (free) into Blenheim Palace and walked for maybe a couple of hours in the grounds, before leaving, confidently, through the front gate. The grey day, lowered to the gloom of winter; cold and foreboding.

Back home, I cooked a roast, and Emma put in her veggie sausages to the mix. Whilst my roast potatoes were soft and fluffy enough inside, they weren’t up to crispiness on the outside.