The End of Summer

There's more than a whiff of autumn in the air this week. The nights are drawing in, the mornings are getting darker and the leaves are beginning to change. Even the courgette plants are finally starting to slow down - although, that might be helped in part by the Thames Water hosepipe ban!

This month, we took a trip to London to take L and J out for a meal to celebrate J's birthday, swept the chimney in preparation for the winter months - I feel the stove may be used more than usual owing to the extortionate gas prices at the moment, and took a trip to Petersfield over the Bank Holiday. We weren't actually aiming for Petersfield, we were heading for the Chichester area with a view to visiting either Fishguard or the Weald and Downland Living Museum. Unfortunately, the road Gods, in their wisdom, chose the Bank Holiday to litter the place with roadworks to such an extent that by the time we reached Petersfield and stopped to find a loo, we had had enough of detours and decided to call it a day and explore there instead. It turned out to be a good move. I loved Petersfield; as well as being picturesque, it had numerous charity shops to mooch round, a Physic Garden to explore, a fantastic second hand book shop and even a yarn shop. Yes, I could definitely live in Petersfield!

We've had a couple of actual theatre trips and bought a month's subscription to NT Live at Home, which means that for the princely sum of £10, we have been able to watch numerous plays from their archives. When the month is up, we plan to leave it for 6 months or so in order to let new plays cycle round before subscribing again.

Here then are the photos from the last month:

A circular walk and picnic, beginning at St. Mary Bourne. We also collected 2 tubs of blackberries:

The resultant crumble, first of the season:

An open air sculpture exhibition at Shaw House. This was my favourite one:

Associated brocante fair:

The cafe that J chose to have lunch in:

My sweetcorn fritters, which were surprisingly filling:

We followed up lunch with a walk in Brockwell Park:

..... which had the tiniest of model villages!:

Courgette pickle - made out of desperation in an attempt to keep up with the plants. It turned out to be surprisingly good and I would definitely make it again:

'Much Ado About Nothing', again at Shaw House:

Seeing Jodie Comer in 'Prima Facie' at the cinema. It was amazing and she deserves every award going for her performance:

R finding crayfish whilst clearing out the weeds from the river. Don't worry, we put him (her?) back!:

Finishing my pair of socks - the yarn was from the Opal  Van Gogh range in the 'Cafe at Night' colourway:

Petersfield Book Shop - it was brilliant and I could have browsed for hours. I bought a copy of Wilkie Collins' 'The Moonstone' as a souvenir:

Lastly, R doing his Dick Van Dyke impression:

That's all for this month. How has your summer been? Are you sorry that it's coming to a close or looking forward to the misty delights of autumn?

Toodle pip for now. x