It’s Beef Stew and Dumpling weather, Lancashire Hot Pot, Chicken Pie weather, comforting food weather. The week has been clear, sugary, crispy, crunchy, cold, cold, cold. As the sun appeared slowly over the hill the grass began to steam and boil. Gradually the land turned green again but now it’s cold and damp and getting worse! Snow forecasts for tomorrow, so unusual here, and freezing fog and dark, dank days. Suddenly it’s just a little warmer and the sky has taken on that certain ominous, pinky yellowy tinge we so rarely see in South Devon.  Time to hunker down, fill the stables with straw, feed the sheep on the hill and prepare for the freeze.

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Relentless wind and rain have battered October. Even today’s crisp sunlight illuminating a transparent clear blue sky does little to lift my perennial autumn melancholy. It evokes memories of childhood solitariness and isolation, of boarding school at seven, of a strangely emptying world. I hate dark mornings too, shopping by streetlight, grey foggy days. And the knowledge that it will only get colder! Most people struggle with ice cold January and February but for me November is the low spot of the year. Those first snow drops on Boxing day, dear mild Devon, lift my spirits once more and carry me on towards spring.  

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