Home sweet Stroud

We arrived back late last night, after a twelve- hour trip via Tyndrum, Callander, Dumfries and Preston, to find the house clean and the cat well cared for. Thank goodness for the help of Andrea, whom I found through a non-traditional house-sitting website.

Today I have done very little except finish listening to Middlemarch, which we started in the car on the way down, and finishing a jigsaw, slowly because I was tired. During a brief moment of sunshine I snapped the last of the orange leaves on the rhus tree in our garden. It's rained so much that the garden looks very clean.

Now that it gets dark so early (we're back on Greenwich mean time now) I can hear screeches of owl and foxes in the garden shortly after the blackout. Tonight there were fireworks too, in neighbouring gardens. I love fireworks but not the sound of people screaming! Talking of which, our house sitter definitely went beyond the call of duty by carving not one, but two, hallowe'en pumpkins I'd left behind!

Back to work tomorrow. All good things come to an end, even the Scottish butter tablet I bought only yesterday.