Badger Shit . .

. . is everywhere every autumn. They leave their parents and go on their gap years and eat things like my mulberries and pears and lots of blackberries and they leave their little piles of purple shit in strategic marker piles-- like, this morning, a marked out row under my washing line. It's always full of seeds and don't smell too good. I am inclined to set a jet hose onto it so that it kind of melts into the grass.

Tonight was so still and warm that I sat out in the dark to try and see the tawny owls that set up their hootings the minute dusk falls, but they always go to distant fields when I go out. I reckon they can sense I'm out there. It was so quiet that all I could hear was the occasional leaf dropping from the rambling roses. In October!

The minute I come in I start to hear the badgers bumbling around outside. A nervous person would think they were burglars but I have taught myself never to be nervous. For example, an enormous crash that I heard outside a decade ago turned out to be badger demolition of bench and boulders. An enormous crash that I heard downstairs the other night would have scared any lesser girl, but I am philosophical, and in the morning I saw that it was my handbag, full of filofax, etc., that had fallen off the car manual. Now the car manual is a very sloping item. I had been consulting it to find out how to stop the damned seat belt from ringing its head off every time I go up the lane. Damned low IQ thing. Who needs a seat belt in their own lane? It should know that I'll put it on when I get to the road, but it's too thick.

Potato Harvest

Time to get my potatoes in, at least a month late, but they are so perfect this year. Enormous, golden and flawless, lying in the glorious autumn sunlight. I forget what kind they are. Rocket or Concorde or something. It's years since I bought seed potatoes. These, as usual, are from last year's bits and pieces left over, probably the smallest runts of the litter: tiny little things from the bottom of the sack. I stick them into egg boxes on upstairs window sills in the spring till they get little dark green sprouts on them. My thoughts today, getting them out into the light was that you obviously don't need to save good big potatoes for seed next year. Just use the little wizened ones from the bottom of the sack.

Tonight's alcohol: a Moscow Mule, which is a miniature of vodka I found at the back of the cupboard, some ginger beer I had left from last time some children came, two starry ice cubes and a wedge of lime. Fantastic!

Blissful Indian Summer

The robins are back, and their dear song is filling the beautiful, golden still air. And, yes! There are still swallows and house-martins, filling my heart with joy and hope.

Mini-Meme: I am listening to Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer" on Radio 2 and it is filling me with wistful longing for I know not what: life.

I am just going to phone my dearest old friend and ask her to take care of herself and not drink too much, as I want her to last into our old age so that, when we all stop work, I can share something of what I call life (a God-sent day like this) with someone I really love. I have so many friends, but a lot of them I just like, not love.