Autumn roads and winter chills

The country roads of Surrey and Sussex are pretty spectacular at this time of year. Our monthly trip out for eggs but coming home cross-country via Liphook and Haslemere. We stopped at the latter for a couple of bits of shopping and some hair dye. Has a distinctly run down ‘seventies feel to it, but I know that Strider holds the hostelries in high regard and often goes there for a pub crawl.

Am reading Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway who is, curiously, John Le Carre’s son and has recently written a new Smiley-Karla novel. Very diverting. Very subterranean London. A little bit Ben Aaronovitch. Everyone has Dickensian names and a mysterious past. Enjoyable nonsense, well written.


We are entering the cold third of the year, the period between November and March when the temperatures drop and the slathering damp beasts of winter with the minus touch in their icy fingers are always waiting to mug you. The season of chills and gloom that we can only fight with food, friends and firelight. Or light of any sort...