She stoops to conker

Literally, I had to stoop and crouch to pick the conkers from the road, out the path of oncoming traffic. The big tree near Waitrose that normally has so many conkers had relatively few, but the leaves looked diseased. Further along the London road, on the other side, I found another mature tree with a better yield, unfortunately scattered all.over the road.The rose hips are from the tree near Waitrose. I am always enthusiastic about autumn's wild harvest. I think this goes back to the days of nature tables at primary school, and the excitement of being sent out into the school grounds to gather seeds, fruits and leaves. Autumn colours are, for me, the most spectacular of the seasons' palette.

Tuesdays at work are going to be busy and exhausting this year, if today's experience.is anything to go by. At half past one I staggered to a local cafe to meet a friend for a drink, and found myself thinking that maybe it should be a vodka and tonic! Afterwards she wanted to buy some trousers, so we went shopping. I found a top I liked, but only tried it on. She got the "teacher's trousers". I shall return to that shop.

After a trip to Waitrose and the conker tree, I returned home to find that the technical problem regarding the speaker's equipment for tonight's AGM had been sorted. I didn't ever really doubt that it would be, but I would have had to chair an informal discussion if it hadn't.

The speaker's talk was highly entertaining, and the AGM was swiftly conducted, so we were all gone by 10pm. Enough people turned up to make it worthwhile, and we don't have to have another one for a whole year. Hurrah for that!


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