Naughty November

The only thing to do when it is windy, dark and raining is to stay in bed and eat cake.....

Missing the sun/Big Dog in her usual position/Exhausted from moving flats/CAKE!

This month I have been mostly:-

Singing in French 

Eating tapas

Moving boxes across London

Travelling on trains

Doing a shoulder stand (very ungracefully)

Listening to Radio 4

Watching James Bond at the pictures

Stacking logs (nice.....)

We've had three concerts this month!  With another three before Christmas, phew.

We sang with the Flanders Orchestra in the Anvil, Basingstoke (nice acoustics) and and in the Cadogan Hall, Sloane Square (posh).

Waiting to rehearse in the Anvil

A coach load of singers broke down on the motorway (a familiar event lately) en route to the Cadogan Hall.  They turned up in the end so I didn't have to do a solo.

Only a handful of chorus members in the Cadogan Hall - no pressure

I had a jolly in Westbury-on-Trym, Bristol with my sister.

This sewing shop was drool making but just reinforced my inferiority complex around needlework.

I loved The Grupo Lounge where we had lunch - right up my street.  The tapas was delicious. 

The Grupo Lounge

Thanks for the photos Sis

Happy Bungalow Girl

It is muchos muddy in the village.  Especially down our farm yard end.  I look like a lollipop lady most of the time as I sport my stylish fluorescent tabard to stop drivers running me over at night!  It is a constant battle with dog towels, muddy cat paw prints everywhere and trying to get in the car for work without getting any mud on yer tights!

This is Phil, who likes to sit on our fence and torment the cat

If I can't be outside - I bake.

Bungalow bake off - 

My coffee and walnut cake

vs. Sarah's milk loaf

I won this time!  Partly due to Sarah's soggy bottom.  Better luck next time.....

Grey

and more grey - roll on Summer!!

I always read a classic on the run up to Christmas.  This year it is 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall'. There's nothing like a dark, spooky book at this time of year - in front of the log burner with a cuppa and a bowl of home made apple crumble and custard......naughty.

'With such reflections as these, I was endeavouring to console myself, as I plodded home from the fields, one cold, damp, cloudy evening towards the close of October.  But the gleam of a bright red fire through the parlour window, had more effect in cheering my spirits, and rebuking my thankless repinings, than all the sage reflections and good resolutions I had forced my mind to frame....'

- The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte

My Christmas cassettes are once more in the glove box of my 16 year old Daewoo Lanos ('A Country Christmas' and 'Christmas with Nat King Cole and Dean Martin').  I know how to live........

The Hunt for Red October

This month I have been mostly:-

- Digging the garden - with a toad and shrew for company.  Frank, you missed one!

- Dreaming - lots.

- Drinking red wine (cause of above?).

- Doing restorative Yoga in a darkened room and trying not to snore.

- Daring to try new things.

My fellow Bungalow Girl has been to Paris on a work trip and texted me these snaps.  I wasn't jealous in any way, shape or form.

I wore Big Dog out one Friday morning by going on a three hour walk!  Pics below.

Puff ball fungi

Spindle tree

We've been on fungi forays in the woods.

Grovely Woods

Common Stink-horn - was so chuffed to spot this!

Jelly Fungi

We've seen a sculpture exhibition by Jenny Pickford entitled 'SuperNature' at The Courts - a National Trust Garden.  The exhibition comprised of 17 sculptures made of forged steel and hand blown glass. Lunch in the old billiard room wasn't bad either.  

Two soups.....

The kitchen garden was cute.  Still lots of colour.

I've been making lots of different soups and cakes.

Carrot, apple and celery soup

Autumn skies are the best......

Eerie

Moody

Spooky

Last Friday it tipped down but rain and gloom doesn't put Big Dog off.  

Hare Warren

This white foam can sometimes appear after a dry spell and subsequent torrential rain.  As the rain flows down the tree it mixes with the salts and acids in the bark and forms a crude soap.

Strange tree foam

I've enjoyed kicking through the leaves

And then snuggling under 'blankie' with my book and a mug of tea.  Simple pleasures are the best.

This is the time of year for lit rooms at dusk.  I used to linger over the chapter in The Wind in the Willows in which lost, homesick and frightened, Mole looks wistfully at the 'squares of a dusky orange-red on either side of the street, where the firelight or lamplight of each cottage overflowed through the casements into the dark world without'.

Mirabel Osler 'In the Eye of the Garden'