Mid November, and it sure gets dark early here now. Come 4 pm and it feels like it’s time to sit down and veg for a while. Last weekend was a lovely weekend, and having just had a few days of rain everything had greened up, and the trees seemed to be at their best. We then had a little cold snap and down came all the leaves gradually, until today when we have had a real “blower” and the leaves are all off the trees now. Can’t say I like these long dark evenings though.

Bonfire night (Guy Fawkes) has just passed. It is supposed to be a one-night celebration, but we seem to have had fireworks going off all over the place, randomly, for weeks, verging on months. Looney toonz. Hallowe’en was a dead loss (yuk) too. We only had 2 small children visit with little paper bags for the candy. We did have a pumpkin in the end. Trish’s nephews carved it, and used the innards to make it look like it had thrown up (saw that at a theme park recently – obviously appealed to them). Next door got the front of their house “egged” badly that night as it was mischief night here.

So much for life in England.

The UK is really revving up for Christmas now. We seem to have been bombarded on the TV with Santa ads for weeks now. Trish has been shopping of course, have to get all the parcels off early, or they won’t get there. We have people that have already received their presents. Haven’t done the cards yet though, and we are usually well up on that by now. I guess with this diary we don’t need to do much of a newsletter this year?

Things at work have been pretty awful lately. With the lay-offs that started last month I now have the only occupied office on the west wing of my floor at work. It’s dreadfully lonely, and boring. It feels like I’m inhabiting a ghost town. Once it gets dark it’s even worse, as you can imagine. Still, we are all supposed to move into one building some time early next year, so roll on that. I shall probably be back to living out of a suitcase by then though. Ah well!

3 more weeks and Trish goes off to Canada. She is off for 4 and a bit weeks, and will be visiting quite extensively while there. I will join her just before Christmas for 2 weeks, and am looking forward to the break. Trish is desperate to see Christina, as it’s been nearly 5 months now since they were last together.