Awesome autumn

My favourite time of year. Autumn. I love the turning of the colours on the leaves, I love the drawing in of the evening and the sunrises and sunsets. I love wrapping up, drinking hot chocolate. I love the wind provided I’m wrapped up and its not causing damage.

According to verywellmind.com temperature and light levels affect which season someone loves most, as does the time of year they were born. It suggested that those born in spring and summer months are more likely to have positive temperaments and be prone to rapid mood swings, whilst those like me, born in autumn and winter months are less likely to be irritable. Not sure if agree with that. I get easily irritable.

Whilst some consider spring as a time of renewal, the vibrant autumn colours appeal to constant desire for change, reflection and plans for the year to come. I can definitely relate to that. I am more engaged through change. I cannot abide the repetitiveness of doing the same job or task all day every day.

Nick Perivale suggested that those with an autumn personality are earthy, warm, organic, rustic and passionate, with a strong connection to mature, a love of past and a yearning to understand how nd why things work. She suggested that autumnal are born organisers and pay attention to detail. With the exception of “warm” I wholeheartedly agree with that assessment.

All three of us recently attended the Hampton Court Palace Food & Drink Festival where I purchased a bottle of toffee vodka, but also a bottle of toffee apple vodka. And oh my goodness, its autumn in a glass. Smooth, warming, subtle.

What season do you resonate with most and why?

Strolling, strolling, strolling

Something I try to do every day is go out for a walk. Sometimes it might just be walking into town, during a working week its around the hospital grounds at lunchtime, and sometimes its a bit more of a planned event, like Tuesday’s epic Thames Path.

On Monday afternoon I took myself for a walk around the block whilst C was waiting for a parcel to be collected. I simply wandered up the main road to the local park, around the edge of the park and back down the back streets. Not very far, but enough.

Wednesday C needed to pick up a prescription so we walked to the GP surgery, about a mile, then can back via the old Cinder Track, a footpath that links the estate where my parents live to the city centre. This path I have trod many times in my childhood.

It seems that a lot has changed along that path since I last went that way. The actual path is the same 2 lane affair. Pedestrians to the left, cyclist’s the right, as you head into the city. But what was once just old scrubland has been turned into a pleasant little tree covered pathway, with children’s play things and benches, and notices telling you about the wildlife that frequents the area.

For all that new scenery there was a sense of the familiar. I’ve walked, run and cycled along that path and back so many times. Its nice to see the scrubland repurchased, but its nice to have the familiar crunch of the path underfoot.

Things change and they can change rapidly and sometimes unexpectedly. Its inevitable that things will progress and move on. Things will never stay the same forever.

As human beings we need to be adaptable and resilient in the face of change. Sometimes that’s easier said than done. I try my best to adapt to new things, like virtual #bellringing rather than the real thing and I try even harder to be resilient. Sometimes going for a walk to clear my thoughts helps with that.

Soup Season

Its definitely turned chillier which means its time to break out the soup maker.

The days of packing salad and cold meats for lunch is drawing to a close, giving way to being able to microwave soup at work. A nice tub of warm soup and a couple of slices of C’s homemade multigrain bread 😋 is perfect for an autumnal day.

As with most weekends it involves meal prep for the week ahead, so soup maker duly cleaned and ready to go, the soup of choice for this coming week is cauliflower and cheese. Its an SW recipe involving many, many cheese triangles. I didn’t put them in until after the rest of the soup had been through the soup maker, then stirred them through whilst it was still hot.

To be honest it’s not the most appetising looking soup. Kind of a very pale yellow (due to the paprika i assume and the cheese triangles). It tasted ok when I stuck my finger in it to test it but don’t know how it will be once reheated at work. Anyway, try it I shall and I have 4 tubs of it to get through in the week ahead, so eat it I will.

Comfort Food

The weather has taken quite a turn, its wetter, windy and cooler. I have retrieved some of my autumn/winter clothes from the depths of the wardrobe and vacuum packed some of the summer clothes away for storage.

I do love winter food. I’m not a great salad eater and I don’t like fruit of any kind in any format so summer eating does get a bit tedious. But now we’re heading for warm, comfort eating. Stews, soups and stodge. Sunday lunch provided the first chance to indulge in custard. Slathered all over a hot chocolate pudding 😋

This weeks food menus include hunters chicken, cajun pork, Thai Red beef curry, parmesan crusted chicken with combinations of rice or potatoes or butternut squash and accompanying vegetables.

After this coming week I’ll start making soups to take to work for lunches instead of cold meats and ryvita. The benefits of having a soup maker means you can just shove all the ingredients in and 20 minutes later you have either chunky or smooth soup depending which setting you used. That, together with C’s homemade multigrain bread would be rather lush.

I’m still going to have to be careful about what I eat though. I’ve lost 2lb this week by really sticking to plan (except for the wine) so I don’t want to undo all that effort but so long as I stick to the SW philosophy I won’t go too far wrong.

I love this time of year for food.

Looking for recommendations

I’m generally a creature of habit with regard to televisual viewing. When I get home from work we watch reruns of Task Master followed by reruns of NCIS that we’ve seen several times, then reruns of Law & Order SVU. And then I’m usually asleep on the sofa.

I was given a Netflix account last Christmas and I’ve watched a few series and the odd film and generally only watch things on Netflix on a Sunday when I’m doing the ironing. The trouble is, it gives you recommendations based on your previous viewing without consideringthat you might not have actuallyenjoyed that, and you might want to trysomethingelse. I also hate spending time scrolling through options trying to find something to watch. Maybe I have a limited understanding of how it works. I’ve watched some things that a few people have recommended. I also hate it when I’ve finished watching a series and the new series hasn’t been loaded yet. I want to watch the whole thing from start to end.

What I want to watch really depends on what kind of mood I’m in but the preprogrammed recommendations don’t necessarily reflect that. I like comedy, supernatural, drama, history and occasionally anything random.

Does anyone have any other recommendations worth watching that doesn’t require ages scrolling through stuff I’m not sure of? Thank you in advance.

Friday Funky Feet

One of my #bellringing friends started “a thing” on Facebook last year, or maybe earlier but I only caught up with it then, about wearing funky socks on Fridays and posting photos of said socks on her timeline.

I don’t think she necessarily thought it was a competition with her friends, just a way of spreading a little fun. However, clearly her friends, including me, decided that this was a new club to join in with, not a competition as to who had the funkiest socks, but just joining in the silliness.

Obviously during the summer the wearing of socks was somewhat reduced and therefore Funky Friday Feet petered out. But I’m pleased to say, now that the weather has turned colder and wetter, the wearing of socks of the silly kind it very much back.

Yesterday, as I was about to put on a pair of socks, I grabbed the next pair in line in my neatly Mari Kondo’d sock drawer. I had almost put the first sock on and suddenly realised that they were the perfect candidate for Funky Friday Feet. I put them back and selected the next, rather boring pair of plain black ones.

So, it is now Friday and I’m pleased to announce my entry into todays silly sock selection. Happy Friday. 😁

Blowing the cobwebs away

We’d decided in the middle of the week that the weather would be slightly improved on Saturday, so that would be our nominated day out. Mr had filled his car up with petrol, booked our tickets for visiting Audley End and all was good.

When I drove to work on Thursday an engine warning light came on in my car. Now, given that my car had only just had its service and MOT the week before I thought that a bit odd. Mr took a look at it on Friday and managed to do something that got rid of the light and suggested that I drove to Audley End to give it a good run as I only usually drive to work and back.

So, we set off with pack up lunch ready, camera, tickets, walking boots and rain coats. We drove a little further on than Audley End and pulled up alongside a little church down a side road and had our lunch in the car as the weather wasn’t as pleasant as we’d hoped. Actually it was quite fun sitting in the car trying to remember the last time we came here. We both remember coming with SD#2 and her French exchange student, bizarrely we can both remember her name was Alice. But we couldn’t remember having been back since. That must have been about 20 years ago.

Lunch scoffed, I drove back round the perimeter wall and down the track to the car park. Not many people about but that’s probably because you had to book in advance and they were limiting numbers.

We wandered around the formal gardens which still had some lovely bright blooms. Then round to the front of the house to go in. We didn’t have to wait long. They were limiting the number of people in each room to 6 so we had to wait for the previous groups to move on. They only had a few of the rooms open and you’re not allowed to take photos. It didn’t take very long to wander round the house before we were back outside again.

We had a look around some of the out buildings, found a little refreshment outlet, the main cafe wasn’t open, got a hot chocolate and an oversized custard cream, then headed back to the car. Sadly, it was too cold and windy to go for much of a walk and rain had threatened again. We probably spent about 2 hours there and it took the best part of an hour to get there, and the same back home again.

On the way home we decided to take a detour around a new housing estate being built. Some of the houses look very odd with very sharp pointy roofs and bits on the side. I expect they probably cost an absolute fortune.

We were home again by 4pm. Time for a cuppa. Although not as nice a day as we’d hoped, it was still good to get out in the fresh air and do something other than sit in front of the computer. Mr checked the photo catalogue on the computer and apparently we did go there about 20 years ago with SD#2 and Alice, the French exchange student then back in 2010 with R. It seems we go every 10 years or so. So in 2030 guess where we’ll probably end up?

It was good to blow some cobwebs away. 🌬

Seasonal change

The colour of leaves is changing, the morning’s are noticably darker longer and the night draws in earlier. We are half way through September, when autumn starts.

Its that time of year when you’re never quite sure whether you’ll need a jumper, or to take an umbrella 🌂 and what shoes to wear. Its the symbolic end to summer hedonism, even if there’s still the odd really hot and sunny 🌞 day.

I love autumn above any of the other seasons. I love the colours of leaves as they turn from green to red, orange and brown. The fruits and berries on trees and bushes seem more vibrant and remind me of hot puddings with custard. Once the leaves have fallen I love to kick about in them and hear them crunch underfoot. The morning mists and dew that make spiders webs sparkle. The clear night skies when you can see all the stars clearly. I even love rain showers. I love the fact that it heralds cozy nights in, wrapping up warm and drinking more hot chocolate (with cream and marshmallows obviously) than is good for you.

Some see autumn as the prelude to winter when harsher times may be ahead, but I welcome its warmth, colour and contradictions.