Over to autumn

Having posted the last throes of summer green the other day, it was hardly surprising that I saw a lot of evidence of autumn colours today on my walk. It was a good walk, in the sense that it was the first one I had done for several weeks where I really felt I could push along, albeit not at my previous pace. But it gave me hope.

Hope was, however, dashed during the night, when I got up to attend to an electrical malfunction which involved the heating coming on (the reason why we switch these things right off when we go away) and almost fell over a cardboard box I had stupidly left in the hall.... and wrenched the same ankle. Back to square one....

A super busy day, and one of persistent rain, so I was almost despairing of getting out for a walk until 5pm, when it suddenly cleared. Lots of progress on several fronts, but mainly a sense that as fast as I tick things off the to do list (one policy was finalised; I've sorted out some supplementary teaching for my classes which will help me out with some weeks where I'm going to be double, if not treble, booked), something else hoves into view. However, the list of things left to be done this weekend is a little shorter than I thought it was going to be at about 3pm this afternoon.

Cooked one of my favourite dishes - a masala chicken curry - for dinner, and then we watched a couple of programmes about Scotland's involvement in the slave trade. They aren't new, but they are very fresh and very relevant indeed.

Our new toaster arrived. The previous one stopped working on Wednesday, and probably was the cause of the electrical malfunction which caused me pain, as it tripped the fuses and then I forgot to reset the clock on the heating/water timer. I ordered it on Wednesday evening, and it was promised for Thursday, but we weren't surprised to see it actually arrive on Friday. I was pleasantly surprised at the low cost. I'm sure toasters actually seem cheaper every time I buy one (which thankfully isn't that often). I haven't used it yet, but I'm quite sure it will be just fine.

Oh, and great excitement. We booked a wee trip to Finland for the end of November. Originally just I was going to go, but now Mr A is coming too, as it makes sense for a variety of reasons. This will be, sadly, in the nature of our goodbye trip. However, it is great that we can fly direct from Edinburgh and don't have to faff about in LHR or AMS or anywhere else.

I seem to have written War and Peace. I'm not quite sure why.