Turning red

All the time I was playing Mah-jong at a friend's house this afternoon I could see this Virginia Creeper out of the window just asking to be today's blip. There are quite a few autumn colours now, and leaves are scurrying along the pavements.

My friend's house is in the Fetcham Gap. Not as scenic as you might imagine. When the area to the west of Leatherhead was being developed in the 1950s a strip of land was left free for an eventual London Orbital. When, many years later, the route for the M25 was selected, the gap that had been left was nowhere near wide enough for the massive mortorway so a different route was found and in the 1990s the"Gap" was developed. You might imagine they would put in a straight road, but in fact it is an imaginative development with twisty roads and numerous cul-de-sacs, all well landscaped.