I like Autumn. It’s always been one of my favourite seasons. The occasional storms, the surprise of a late or Indian Summer. First log fire since March. Small pleasures.

Local entertainment has come in the form of Cattle incursions onto our property, which normally has only sufficient grazing for six or seven cattle at a time. A few weeks ago we found twenty five, including a very handsome looking Black Angus bull. Still haven’t worked out how they ended up in our modest acreage. All the fence boundaries are sound, but livestock is like that. Notwithstanding, I made a couple of phone calls, other phone calls were made using a method that would put any grapevine to shame, and the errant animals were retrieved and put back to grazing their allotted meadow.

Writing has been a lower priority since the last post. I have been doing necessary property upgrades, planning travel for next year and building a replacement log and coal store, tidying up the screed in one of our sheds, grass cutting, gardening etcetera.

Then there’s the dentistry. A root canal and subsequent treatments which I have found rather debilitating. Still not finished at the time of writing, dental matters being what they are. We’re been fortunate enough to find a New York trained Dental Hygeinist not too far away, and whatever your opinion of North American medicine (Canadian or US), their dentistry is superb. Our new dentist operates from a modern office in town with state of the art facilities, and despite my anxiety, having suffered the slings and quarrels of UK NHS dentistry, found the experience tolerable and not as uncomfortable as other experiences in the dentists chair.

There’s a new story from the reject pile in the short stories section entitled ‘I scatter Lavender‘. A two thousand and something word length apocalyptic tale about human stupidity and how fear can drive people over the rim of the insanity event horizon. A topic that seems quite relevant in this day and age.