It’s Sunday and it’s getting colder.  I’m busy chomping my way through some Burgen toast, I find if I let it cool down before buttering it ((well, before using Bertolli on it, clearly I’m not allowed butter)) then the overall taste of the bread is much more neutral.  If I eat it hot then the linseed and soya comes through much more strongly and is off-putting.  In sandwiches (un-toasted) it tastes very strongly of its own flavours and it’s hard to taste the content.  Luckily I guess, I don’t really find sandwiches that exciting, so I’ll stick to toasting it for breakfast as a low GI start to the day.

If I was oblivious to the change in weather around me, I would soon become suspicious that something was changing because the cats are behaving differently.  Well, Fizz isn’t behaving that much differently, but Bubbles certainly is.  She’s a real heat-slut, she hunts for the hottest sunbeams, flattest baking roofs, warmest part of the floor (where hot water pipes flow underneath), cosiest chairs with abandoned hot-water bottles ((Grete often uses one to sooth her back pain)).  During the Spring, Summer and warm Autumn days this means that Bubbles insists on being outside.  Either following the sun around our slowly rotting deck or lying on the roof on either our shed or the sheds of neighbours.  She’ll come in, eat half a mouthful of biscuit and head straight back out to bake.  If it’s a bit windy she’ll lie in the house, in a sunbeam near the door.  However, as soon as the weather turns cool she changes mode.  She runs out to ‘do her business’ ((she will use the tray indoors if necessary but she much prefers to go outside)), runs back in and then curls up on the nearest soft surface.  This morning, that’s Grete’s computer chair, complete with residually warm hot-water bottle.

Her change in behaviour is the clearest sign yet that we’re heading into Autumn.  She’ll essentially sleep now until Spring.  Tough life.

Not that I can complain, snuggling down inside a warm protective house during the Winter is one of my favourite feelings in the whole world.  The whole family ((which means me, Grete and two cats)) staying warm in the lounge with the fire on and the world locked out is such an excellent feeling for me.  I’d probably opt to move somewhere cold, just so I can have the excuse of a huge roaring fire to keep us warm.

And who doesn’t love the feeling of a hot cup of tea ((insert hot beverage of your choice)) between your cold hands, warming them up even as you drink and feel it heating you up from the inside as well.

We said we’d take some bags of grass / weeds / dirt to the tip today, from Grete’s exploits turning over the other border in the garden, but I’m not sure how successful we’ll be considering the day is getting on already and we’ve not moved.  The only issue is that it’s forecast rain tomorrow and moving bags of wet grass / weeds / dirt is much more complex.

Warning: there follows pictures of spiders.

I’m jealous of some of Simes’ photo’s.  I love pictures of natural objects, but I really have no talent for seeing those shots or taking them.  My hands shake too much these days really (annoyingly) but I was inspired by some photo’s he’d taken to nip out into the garden and take some of my own.  Also, I wanted to get a couple of shots of stuff that I’d spoken about above.  So, here be photo’s.

	This is a view of the back of our house, and the garden, which is only this tidy because of all the hard work Grete puts in keeping it tidy.  On the right of the photo you can see the new border she’s digging, so that we have matching borders.  When we first moved in the borders had various things growing in them, although on the left side of the photo we had a hedge and not the fence.  The tree next to the table and chairs is our little apple tree which we pruned recently.  Yesterday this garden was bathed in bright hot sunshine.  Today it looks like Autumn.
	Here’s a closer shot of the border.
	This is a quick close-up of the little apple tree.  I just liked the mossy appearance.
	Probably the last remaining apple in the garden, on the big apple tree which towers over the decking.  Amazingly pristine considering the amount of wildlife in the garden trying to eat them.
	A spider, seemingly hanging in mid-air (web is too fine to show up from this distance).
	The spider in context, it’s hanging on a web between the tree and the fence, over the decking.
	And finally, the full reveal, you can still see the spider in the bottom right of the photo.
	Another spider, on the big apple tree (it’s covered in them).  I really like these spiders as long as they’re stationary and I don’t walk face first into their webs in the morning.
	And last, but in no way least, this is Bubbles in her traditional Winter pose.

It’s still September, it’s only really just turned Autumn, and today we discovered that our local Tesco superstore has dedicated one entire isle to it’s Christmas festive produce.  Puddings, chocolates, nuts, a small selection of festive gifts.  Christmas gifts.  In SEPTEMBER.  We were in Primark and they have Christmas wrapping paper for sale.

WTF!

I know we seem to be saying this every year, that shops start earlier and earlier, but surely this is getting rediculous?

Did they really always do this 15 years ago? 20 years ago?  Was I always just oblivious?  Or are shops truly starting earlier and earlier with the whole festive shopping experience.

We haven’t even had Halloween / All Hallow’s Eve / Samhain yet, how can we be thinking about Christmas.

And don’t get me started on the commercialisation of Halloween either, quoting,

Halloween celebrations in England were popularised in the late twentieth century under the pressure of American cultural influence, including a stream of films and television programmes aimed at children and adolescents, and the discovery by retail experts of a marketing opportunity to fill the empty space before Christmas. Between 2001 and 2006, consumer spending in the UK for Halloween rose tenfold from £12 m to £120 m, according to Bryan Roberts from industry analysts Planet Retail, making Halloween the third most profitable holiday for supermarkets.

Bah humbug (I can’t believe I have to say that in September).

We’re starting the 5th year in our ‘new’ house (we bought it and moved in in 2003, around August if I recall).  We bought the house with a more-than-100% mortgage.  We didn’t have any money for a deposit (we were renting, no plans to buy, until our landlady wanted to move back in) and we had no spare cash to cover all the costs and paying moving firms, etc.  So we borrowed more than the house was worth from the mortgage company.  In those days they were eager to lend us the cash.

Assuming the value of our house now is probably the same as it was 5 years ago (it went up for a bit and then has probably fallen again in the last year) we’re into positive equity now.  We’ve paid enough off the mortgage and associated unsecured loan that we now owe less than the value of the property (hopefully).

This may have happened earlier, I may have just not noticed on our mortgage statements, but it’s still a pretty good feeling knowing that there’s a good chance we’re in the black on our house after having little choice but to be hugely in the red.

While we still have an overdraft I don’t want and more credit card debt than I’d like, it is another slow step in the right direction (since paying off our other unsecured loan recently).

Work was mad, had some major issues and ended up working on it until 10pm.

Bad food day /sigh.  You don’t want to know what I ate for my evening meal (at 9:30pm).

Click to see in it’s original glory and to spend the rest of the day browsing the other strips.

Actually, it doesn’t hurt as badly as I thought it would, maybe the Yoga is paying off.

Today : taking all our stuff to the recycling centre / skip place, probably 3 trips (this car isn’t as big as the Mondeo which would have made it in one).

And that means we have to get the cardboard boxes back out of the little shed … where they’ve been overnight … and put them in the car.  Let’s hope the squirrel spiders haven’t moved back in yet.