But for now, back to Sunday.
Sunday
We woke to a dull and grey dawn, but with the promise of brightness later. But also the possibility of thunderstorms, so maybe a little of something for everyone. I make bacon butties with the extra smoked streaky I got the day before from the butcher, and then settled down to watch MOTD, which was as full of surprises as the previous opening weeks of the season: Palace won at Stamford Bridge and West Ham thrashed Liverpool at Anfield. Amazing. Later in the day, City travel to Southampton for their first televised game of the season, and we travelled in more anticipation rather than hope. But we shall see.
Once the football had been watched, we went out laden with carrier bags to do some autumnal foraging. Yes, it is that time of the year when we can get lots of free food and make jams/chutneys/jelly and/or wine. We have been making notes of where we saw sloes and blackberries growing through the summer, so instead of walking across the fields of beans, we turn down the narrow footpath to the farm at the bottom of the dip and up the other side, at least for a few yards, and on one side the hedges are full of over-ripe blackberries, so full of juice and sweetness that picking them makes them burst. Perfect. But after picking those, the rest up the hill were still green and stunted, Jools thinks there are some more around the top of the field, so I say I will take the path across the fields to Fleet House and double back as there are blackberries along that track.
Over the large field of flax: interestingly, I watched a great show about flax last week, how it helped the war effort and how hard it is to extract the fibre from the stalks then make yarn out of it, but it is this that make parachute straps, webbing and ropes that helped win the 2nd world war. Anyway, some are still in flower, and so a long way from being ready for harvesting. The fields are beans are even drier and blacker, and still show no sign of being harvested. Perhaps they never will.
Along the track there were a few small berries, and nearly enough to fill the large sandwich bag I was carrying.
Back home, after coffee, Jools makes an apple and blackberry crumble, with the berries we picked, and the windfall apples she found. I topped up the apples with a couple of cookers taken from our own little tree, and they were great. As is the crumble, smothered with huge amounts of thick fresh cream, and accompanied by a huge cuppa. Just as it should.
In the afternoon, I stay home to listen to the City game on the radio, whilst Jools goes to see Nan. City are awful, have a man sent off and lose 3-0. Its our first away defeat of the year, but it was going to come sometime, I guess. I think some lessons will have been learned, and they will come back stronger.
In a bad mood, I decide to mow the lawn, this also to avoid the cats, who pretend they cannot tell the time and insist it is dinner time, despite bening only just three in the afternoon. I know the noise of the mower engine will give me, if not the neighbours, some peace and quiet. And after half an hour, I am sitting on the patio sipping an nice ice cold beer, and Molly joins me to remind me about dinner. As if i forgot.
I do feed them, then prepare our dinner, which involves getting the pasta salad and cold breaded aubergine out of the fridge and pouring more drinks.
We listen to David Byne on the radio, playing some of his favourite tracks, and very illumiating it is too, as you would expect of course.
All through the day I had been looking at the storm tracker, and as the day turned into evening, stormclouds began building over Brittany, then drifting along the Channel until we could see the flashed of lightning, illuminating the clouds in the most spectacular way. I did try to take shots of the lightning, but only managed a few poor efforts, this being the best of them.
We did go to bed knowing that an even larger storm was drifting up the Channel and would be with us at about midnight. Until then, then....
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