A little moan, some gratitude and the usual bits of this and that.

Did you know that Christmas was something like twenty weeks away? Did you want to know that? Does it feel you with dread, alarm, despondency? Dismay perhaps, at the way time slips past so quickly? Does it have you itching to make your cards, plan your celebrations, make endless gift lists and lists of 'things to do and the order in which to do them'? NO!! Maybe like me, the sight of a GMTV presenter standing amid fake snow, with a Father Christmas beside him, outside a certain Knightsbridge store for whom the run-up (or run-down, depending on your point of view) to Christmas has already begun, just has you gnashing your teeth, shouting GRR!! and switching off, mentally as well as physically. It's not that I am a Scrooge, just because we don't have family Christmases, just because we don't do the exchanging of gifts thing, doesn't mean to say I am immune to the magicality of it... I love fairy lights and have them up on a dresser all year round, and have strings of twinkly white lights hanging off holly trees, and on the summerhouse, and on bushes AT CHRISTMAS. I have one or two small Christmas trees, one of which is definitely non-traditional, but AT CHRISTMAS. I make cards, pies, sometimes a pudding, but AT CHRISTMAS. You get the message now don't you? I don't even want to think about it on a day when I step outside and the heat is so oppressive it's almost like someone throws a heated electric blanket on you the minute you go out. With luck, the forecasters will have got it right and there will be thunderstorms and rain this afternoon to break it up.

So that's the moan, now for the bit of gratitude. We hear a lot in the news of youngsters attacking one another, of teenagers attacking adults with knives and so on, gangs roaming around, vandalism, and stories of teenage binge drinkers - and according to a recent report the reason they drink is because they are bored... ah, diddums. Even with all the technological gizmos and more freedom to roam and get up to mischief than is good for them in some cases, they are bored. When you hear of the mayhem young children wreak, of the misery and damage they cause, and see groups of children walking around your own village, and then when you read in your village magazine, as I did, of the anti-social behaviour reports in your own village, you worry that it's all getting too close. Especially when you have been a bit smug and boasted of the low crime rate in this area generally. You read the report, dreading what you will find.... apparently some young children had been knocking on people's doors on one street, and running away. (Isn't this something children have been doing since time immemorial, and didn't they have a name for it back in the 40s and 50s?) Our modern day miscreants were made to face up to their anti-social behaviour, and were taken with their parents, to the people whose lives they had made a misery, and made to apologise. Will this stop them repeating? Time will tell. And the other report was of teenagers swearing loudly on one particular street. They too, were made to apologise for causing this breach of the peace. So whilst I am not condoning anti-social behaviour at all, I did feel thankful that this was all we had to put up with, and hope it remains so.

Onto lighter matters now, and crafts... this is a tweedy brownish cushion cover just completed, with ribbed back and basket stitch front, and fastening with old brown leather buttons, dating from the 70s, which I have had in my button jar since removing them from... something!!

And these are some crocheted squares I am making, a patchwork confection using these colours, different squares, a real sampler type afghan, a project for a friends' birthday or Christmas present, depending when I finish it... and it might not even be this year since I keep getting sidetracked. At the moment I am crocheting a holey bag, a round bag, and knitting a bag as well. Do I like making bags? No, whatever gave you that idea!!!

Books as ever, are making an appearance. I don't know if there are any fans of Alexander McCall Smith amongst you, but I like his writing. I don't like the 'Ladies' series, crime fiction isn't my thing and I have no patience with trying to pronounce the names in my head as I read. But I love his Sunday Philosophy Club series, and 44 Scotland Street. This 'CORDUROY MANSIONS' is another similar novel to those set in the block in Scotland Street, only this is in London and the original appeared as 100 episodes I think it was on the Telegraph website. It is just the same as Scotland Street, with a diverse set of characters living in this mansion block of flats, and about their lives. Anyway, this was a real snip of a bargain at a fiver from one of my regular mail order book catalogues, so I couldn't resist? 'A CHATEAU OF ONE'S OWN' by Sam Juneau is another of those books about people who leave their native country to go and find a better life/follow a dream in some foreign climes. This is about Sam, who is American, his wife Bud who is Irish, and how they leave their cramped and smelly apartment in New York when they buy an old, huge chateau which needs an awful lot of work. Well written and easy to read, which is just what I want on a Sunday afternoon.

I love anything to do with the seaside, grew up across the road from a beach in Lancashire for the first fifteen years of my life (barring the first couple of years or so) and now live just a few miles from it, from the famous beaches at Holkham where the Household Cavalry are visiting this week and taking their beautiful horses for a canter in the sea, and where Stephen Fry can be seen looking out to sea at the start of 'KINGDOM'. It is a fabulously beautiful and wild place, a definite place to visit for any of you planning a trip to Norfolk. So these three little books caught my eye, and although only small, are packed with history and photographs. Another bargain they were too!

At the moment Norfolk is suffering with plagues of wasps, having previously been invaded by swarms of ladybirds last week. We haven't seen either in large numbers, there are no more than usual, but we have been affected by the invasion of the Painted Lady butterflies. In fact, I don't recall ever seeing as many butterflies in the garden as we have this year. Not just the Painted Lady, who sit sunbathing on the gravel and the moment you set foot on it rise, en masse... well, that might be over-exaggerating somewhat, but certainly there are usually at least a dozen in one area. We also have several other varieties in abundance, the peacock, the comma, common blue, red admiral, cabbage white, common white and last week the fabulous brimstone butterfly, which is such an acidic yellow, with a red dot on his wings. Truly a flash of brightness as it darted around the garden, where there is an abundance of plants for them to feed on.. for a start, at least six different buddleias. Sadly, they never sit still long enough for me to photograph them... unlike this fluffy bumble bee, who was either too lazy, too hungry, or too greedy, to be disturbed by a mere mortal with a camera, from his feasting on the yellow buddleia.

And before I go, another boast about pickings from the garden. All our Sunday lunch came from the garden, apart from the roast chicken. But here are the last of my carrots - I sowed a couple more rows yesterday along with garlic, lettuce and giant Italian parsley - the first of our stringless flat green beans, and some of the potatoes from a large pot. As I have said before, they wouldn't win prizes, but they are mine own, grown from seed, nurtured, watered, kept free from weeds, covered with net to protect them from nasty flying creatures and grown at table top height for ease in the case of the carrots, and I am proud of them. They were so fresh and full of flavour, as all of you growers will know.

And I had to have a bouquet from the garden for the dinner table... chocolate cosmos, white cosmos, a crocosmia which is smaller than the LUCIFER and produces pretty orangey flowers, the red BISHOP dahlia, some effervescent foliage from a euonymus, the apricot-yellow buddleia, and a small sunflower. I love sunflowers, this is one of three which have grown all by themselves, no seed planting here, since they have obviously fallen out of the bird feeder and germinated. I am not complaining, but it has made me determined to try growing them again properly, myself, next year.

And so on this flowery note, I shall leave you for this week, with my usual thanks for dropping by, for your comments on this and my last posting, and for the new people who have joined the gang of followers. Thank you, all are welcome. Take care and enjoy your week, your weekend too.