Blogtober 2023 : Day 30

Not so small daughter went back to college today.  I’d love to tell you that she bounced out of bed at 6.30am when the alarm went off and was raring to go, but instead she overslept and it was a bit of a rush.  I have no idea how she made it to the bus on time but she did!  It felt strange this morning as it was lighter – our clocks went back an hour yesterday so we’re now back on GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) and not BST (British Summer Time) – but the downside of that was that it was dark by 5pm and it’s going to be no wonder that people’s fuel bills go up as it’s going to start getting dark earlier and earlier now until Christmas so the lights and the heating will be on for longer.

Ah well, it shouldn’t be a surprise, it happens at the same time every year!  I do wish that they’d left it alone for a bit longer this year, though.  I’m not ready for it to be dark and having to put the lights on by 5pm.

There were lots of lights last night at the International Guide celebration that we went to.  I’ve written about it in yesterday’s Monthly Musing but in case you’ve not read that yet, it was an event for all of the Guide and Ranger groups who went abroad this year – not so small daughter’s group who went to Japan, plus trips to Madagascar, Korea (to the World Scout Jamboree), Canada and Romania.

Yes, I did take my sock 🙂

It was a great night – it was really good fun listening to all the accounts of the trips and seeing the places through teenagers’ eyes is always a different experience.  It was quite a late night, though, which probably accounts for the oversleeping this morning!

As it was the first day back after the holidays and a Monday as well, I tried not to launch in and do All The Things but instead decided to take it all a bit more slowly.  It was pouring with rain (you may be surprised at that; we’ve not had much rain in October – ha!) so the dog took himself off to lie in front of the Aga, and I took my mug of tea and my laptop back to bed so that I could go through my plan for the week and later on, when it stopped raining, we went out.

I decided that we’d go across the field with the “new” footpath that I may have mentioned once or twice this month.  This is what it looked like earlier in the month …

and now, that soil is a mess of clay, mud and huge puddles.  I don’t think anything is going to grow in it and I don’t think that even a tractor could get through it.  I should really have taken a photo but the dog was keen to go and I was too busy trying to stay upright in the mud to want to get my phone out.  I’ll show you another day.  It’s such a shame, it’s never been as bad as this – if this is what land management is supposed to be about then I’m not sure that the farmer was listening during that lesson.

It’s getting late again and I’d like to get a few more rounds of my sock in before I head off to bed so I’ll leave you with one last photo.

I heard a strange noise in the kitchen and I couldn’t quite work out what it was until I spotted someone high up on the cupboards …

Astrid quite often goes up there – and quite often makes me jump as I’m not expecting her to be there.  I used to have to lift her down but now she’s quite comfortable about jumping up and down from the windowsill so I leave her to it.  Exercise for a stay-at-home cat.  I do keep wondering if I could make some kind of aerial runway around the house for her to exercise on but I think that I may give that a miss.  It’s bad enough with her making me jump when she’s up on the cupboards, imagine if she was high up elsewhere in the house and I wasn’t expecting her – it’d be enough to finish me off! 🙂

The last day of Blogtober tomorrow, I’ll see you then! xx