After the rains,
The river runs swiftly.
#autumn???? #rain #swolen #rivers #poetry

Autumn light through the trees… #autumn???? #light

A walk in the woods in the autumn leaves… #autumn???? #KickingLeaves????

Fairy houses or fungi…? @evenleywoodgarden #fungi #fairies #Autumn????

Seasonal colours in @evenleywoodgarden
#AutumnWalks #Autumn???? #AutumnLeaves????

Happiness is being surrounded by trees… #trees #woodland #Autumn???? @evenleywoodgarden

Much needed countryside and fresh air with @vnemma… #AutumnWalks #Autumn???? @evenleywoodgarden

Autumn fruit… #fungi #fungiphotography #Autumn???? @evenleywoodgarden

I love #Autumn???? and I love #conkers????… #AutumnEquinox

Old Rectory living at Deddington… #autumn???? #walk #sunshine????

Went for an autumnal walk at Deddington Castle and all I got was plagued by ladybirds… ???????????? #autumn???? #Ladybird????

Lady Bird @vnemma… ???????? #autumn???? #Ladybird????

#Autumn???? is a time for swirling, fallen leaves, and stories. What are you reading this weekend? If you need something new why try the ultimate in seasonal tales that is #MrTumnal – link in the bio…

More #autumn???? colour and flowers at @aston_pottery…

#autumn???? #flowers and colour at @aston_pottery

When @vnemma’s mum came to visit for a trip out into the country for some #autumn???? colour and sunshine…

Sweet potato, black beans, paprika and maple served with brown rice and guacamole… #warmingfood #autumn???? @deliciouslyella

Want a new book for the #autumn????? Amazon are currently discounting the paperback edition of #TheImaginaryWife to an incredible £1.62!!! https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0957175698/ #autumnreads #amreading

First roast dinner of #autumn???? ????

Did you know that this is the wall outside Bevington House where Louis Tumnal lives. It’s a story that opens as summer ends and then takes you through the year. #MrTumnal is the perfect story for #autumn????
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http://viewbook.at/MrTumnal
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Everyone has an idea of their ideal family. Not everyone’s become real.
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#amreading #books #autumnreads

What are reading this #autumn????? In a story that opens as summer ends and then takes you through the year #MrTumnal is the perfect story for the season. Get the link in the bio.
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Everyone has an idea of their ideal family. Not everyone’s become real. .
#amreading #books #autumnreads

The beauty of #autumnleaves and water… #autumn???? #reflections

#Autumn???? is the magical time of year when, if you bend an ear and listen, you can hear the #fairies scamper through the leaves… #MrTumnal

The #RainPavillion really comes into its own in #autumn????

Walk in the woods… #StokeWoods #autumn????

A small harvest of cob nuts from the garden… #autumn????

Sitting in the garden in the #autumn???? sun #amreading, and soaking my feet in a #kefir bath ‘cos that’s the way I rock…

Bicester looking gorgeous in the #autumn???? sunshine. Love my little market town… #Bicester

Almost too beautiful to eat. Thank you to @millakontkanen and her allotment for the butternut squash that isn’t. Now I just have to find that scrummy recipe I had… #autumn???? #squashes

I confers!

#conkers #autumn????

Fruits of the season… #conkers #autumn????

Waiting for dinner… #spider #autumn????

Misty mornings
of August days.

Curled leaves lie in the gutter
With fallen conkers, shells split
Bunches of elderberries, squashed
a cushed, fermented smell that
lingers in the still, fresh, air.

A day of muted greens,
and soft shadows.
A day disguised of wher it will go after
from the shroud of mist
on the still morning of Autumn.

Written on the X5 Bicester to Oxford bus, 22 August 2017, 7.22am.

Misty morning at the end of August… #endofsummer #autumn???? #inspirational

Autumn has always been my favourite season – even over and above that of Spring – the quality of the light, the temperature, and the smells of autumn make it the best ever. Melissa Harrison’s anthology, Autumn, is a beautiful and inspiring miscellany of poetry, prose, and non-fiction both collected from past writings, and specially commissioned for this collection.

We are taken on a series of personal journies that are about, inspired by, or are rememberances of how Autumn is. This is a book about Autumn to be read at Autumn.

There are sister books to this for all four seasons which I intend to read, in sequence as the year progresses.

Today? Today, was different. Although, that said, we did still get there too late to get into prime position but we got a good view over the marshes and the reed beds anyway, seeing something like this (photo from the RSPB website)…

It was amazing. It was glorious. But it is still only my first murmuration; I want to see more.

The roads were blissfully quiet on the way to work though, and by half-seven it was the most beautiful autumnal day, so there were plus points…

Emma and I continued our walk up Port Meadow with Barney and then back along a section of the Oxford Canal. I loved it. Sunshine over the meadow with a blustery wind and a backdrop of moody clouds, and then the inspiring delight of the canal, with its tow path down one side and the backs of narrow if extensive houses that led down to the canal. The backs of houses are so much more interesting than the front, don’t you think?

Back home, and whilst Emma had a short snooze, I read with a cat on my lap and Barney dog at my feet, until my Mum and Dad arrived home bearing cakes to accompany a cup of tea. We chatted for a bit, and then we gave them a light supper of biscuits and cheese (posh cheese from the Bicester farmer’s market a few week’s back) before they went on their way to get to my brother’s in Cambridge. I read some more while Emma caught up Strictly action.

What I don’t understand is why I’m experiencing this, this Autumn? It’s nice to have long evenings that stretch out ahead of you as evenings can be the best You time there is, but why am I forgetting the time so much this year?

It was a glorious day out. Cotswold Villages are so very pretty, and they look all the prettier in the autumnal light against the stone walls with the colours in the leaves. Its all beautiful. A mixture of this, and a small but agreeably livable in manor house filled with interesting and intriguing objects, was all very inspiring. Snowshill Manor is full of stories, and Charles Wade is a man whom you want to find out more about. From the moment that we started looking round the garden with its ponds and the remnants of Charles’ model village that he was an eccentric and probably somewhere on the autism spectrum. He made me think of Louis Tumnal.

The idea has been brooding in my mind over the last few days and now I think I’ve worked it out. I need to go back and rework the descriptions of Mr Tumnal’s house to add more stuff, more collections, and objects, and items of interest and with stories attached. But this crowded house is only the tip of the iceberg. In the final, fourth, part of the story, after Louis has freed himself from Miss Leroy and he is able to rebuild his relationship with Kathryn, he gets to go back to his father’s old house, untouched in years, a large house in the rolling countryside to the north and west of Wren Hoe – an old manor on the side of a valley with a terraced garden and stories attached. Its a glimpse, for Kathryn, into the future, but a sign that things will be, can be alright.

Its good to discover these things.

There’s an interesting interview with him in day’s The Scotsman
Interview: Chris Packham – Never mind the buzzards; Jackie Hunter [30 October 2009]

Asked whether he has a preference for spring or autumn when it comes to observing wildlife, Packham has a metaphor which, if not quite Keatsian in its celebration of the seasons, is poetic in its own way. “It’s like the difference between drinking beer and brandy.

“Spring is a great slurp of instant, refreshing relief, because you’ve waited all winter and suddenly everything flows in a very short space of time, singing and flowering. Autumn, on the other hand, is a glass of brandy, something to savour. There’s all the energy and dynamism we see in spring, but it happens over a longer period of time.”

2. This evening I popped into Sainsbury’s on the way home from work – it was to be the Summertown M&S Simply Food but I changed my mind after I could only find candles in there (oddly the only thing that I couldn’t get in Sainsbury) – and impulse bought India Corn (the decorative sort) and little squashes and tiny pumpkins to make my house all nice and festive for the Autumn season.

3. Does anyone know how one would go about drying/preserving mini-pumpkins and gourd squashes -€“ I can remember one year I did it wasn’t terribly successful. Is there a technique like with drying flowers?

4. I’m really enjoying the current Jamie Oliver series, Jamie at Home – there’s more of an emphasis on ‘real’ recipes that you can actually see yourself having a go at cooking, and it’s all centred around vegetables, which of course, depending on the size of your garden you can grow yourself (I can grow some vegetables in my garden but its not ideal…). Given the predominance of vegetables it’s a little odd that most of the recipes end up being meat dishes. And here’€™s the thing, to my knowledge there haven’t been any TV series out there (or indeed books) which deal with providing exciting, easy, everyday (and special occasion) recipes for both vegetarians and meat-eaters. And yet the number of households out there where couples are of mixed persuasion, or familes with a vegetarian in their midst must be in their millions. Could this idea be the next big thing? A series that gives recipes that are exciting and scrummy and everyday but which suit both tastes…

5. There should be a fifth thing here. I think you might already have guessed that I love Autumn…

2. Today is my 5 Month Anniversary being with Emma. It’s funny to think how we’ve been going out for a whole summer season. It’s not been the summer I would ever have imagined I would have, but it has been one of the coolest…

3. I have another interview lined up for next week. Back at T&F this time it’s for an eProduction Editor job – basically some kind of quasi print and online position. Nice thing about this one is that its one where they approached me.

4. I’m on the cusp of completing the revisions to chapter 12 of That Novel, thanks to some productive lunchtimes. If I remember the rest of the story from then on it, then I should begin to pick up speed again. I always knew that Part Two was going to take some work (ie. there was some absolutely atrocious stuff there!)

5. One more week and I’m holiday (at last). To be precise, I’m currently working my last Friday in September (now that’s got make one feel good). Tomorrow, I shall head into town to pick up the last remaining bits and bobs for The Return to Wasdale: 10 years on…

And I’m glad I did. It was great. Written and directed by Julie Delpy, the film owes a lot to the Richard Linklaker films Before Sunrise and Before Sunset (the latter of which Julie Delpy also helped to co-write). It’s another film where they talk, alot, and where the conversation goes from inane and comedic to deeply serious and interlectual in the blink of an eye. I would like to know though why Julie’s character is in love with Adam Goldberg’s – I mean come on, surely girls wouldn’t find him attractive what with that many tattoos over his body?!

Leaving the theatre just after 6 o’clock, Jericho was just beginning to get a bit of an evening buzz, and dusk was setting in, and it felt so fantastically autumnal. I love this time of year!

Pumpkin Harvest
Originally uploaded by shepline on 22 Oct ’05, 6.42pm PST.

Went shopping in Salisbury on Saturday, a very agreeable ‘little’ city to shop in, and bought some new walking boots. My 20 year old pair that I bought up in Betys-y-coed one Easter have finally reached the end of the road, climbed their last mountains. The Brasher boots I bought in their place, were chosen instinctively; on sliding my foot into them, I knew. I also came away with a new top, which is agreeably cozy.

Other than that, I foraged for free food, with blackberries from the hedge, and sloes from which to make sloe gin, and crab apples from my folks’ tree for ye jelly.

Next week, it’s north again, to Derbyshire, to stay on Saturday night with some old friends on parents, and there to go on to Matlock Bath, and the christening of Rachel’s (she of my A-Level Art, English, and Sociology classes) second child.