it's dark and it's raining and it's only 1/4 to November

I love the Autumn - the other Autumn,
not the one we're having today.
The other Autumn has long ripe warm sunny
days where the trees are full of colour
and the light is an
extraordinary uplifting mix of gunmetal grey and gold.
But that's the other Autumn.
Today's Autumn is cold and raining and
the sun doesn't seem to have risen
much beyond woolly blanket grey all day.
This is the other, other Autumn.

Commitee Meeting.

Every few months a group of professional writers based in East Anglia meet up over a long lazy meal, cooked by one of our number, assisted on occasions by their partners (the degree of assistance varies from household to household but generally those who help, whether by suggesting menus, growing the ingredients or doing the lion's share of the cooking, make a huge contribution which in any other organisation would probably mean they got mentioned in dispatches or given a commemorative plate and bouquet).

Anyway the food is always good, the company wonderful, and conversation ranges from the cerebral, via the popularist, through to high farce and low comedy. Today it involved a cross country hike to an allotment.

I was invited to join after the whole thing was established, but the general idea is that we circulate menus not minutes, and - at meetings - quickly get down to talking, drinking, eating, laughing, and walking - no minutes are taken, no subs collected and no business done, any matters arising are quickly forgotten.

Long may it continue.

October 1st ... harvest home

I garden - it's something about being over 50; one minute you're having kids, thinking about the rock and roll life style you've left behind and regretting the passing of youth and the next you're wondering whether to go organic and whether there is still time to get another row of carrots in before the soil is too cold.

This weekend I've been reaping what I've sown... literally. I've picked beans to dry, squashes to store and made about a gallon of pasta sauce out of the tomatoes,peppers, onion and garlic I've grown this year and you know what? It feels fabulous!

Okay, so we're not self sufficient by a long way, but not much beats watching the progress of the seeds you've planted and then eating the things you've grown, nipping out at supper time to dig a root of new potatoes, pull a couple of cobs of corn, marvel at growing your own grapes, cut a lettuce or pick a few tomatoes, or come back in with spring onions and courgettes still warm from the afternoon sun - at least not when you're over 50, that is.

I've just come back from a weekend in Northumberland.

One of my best friend's handsome sons and his beautiful girlfriend were being married. After the legally required registry office ' do', the couple invited us to join them in a Humanist ceremony to celebrate their marriage, held in the garden of the bride's family home.

It was one of the touching weddings I've ever been to, the carefully chosen words reflecting who the couple are as people and what they bring to the relationship.

There was enough ritual and ceremony to give it a sense of meaning and weight and enough human touches to make it both movingly intimate and warmly engaging for the family and friends.

The vows were about loving and caring and mutual growth and support –much like church vows in many ways - but far more personal
without being mawkish or over worked. These were preceded by music and followed by readings from two of the bride and groom’s oldest friends – one was from a shared favourite book, The Velveteen Rabbit - from the bride and the reader, Katie’s, shared childhood.

I’ve enclosed the readings below because there were just so apt:

This one is an edited version of something written by Louis de Berniere:
Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion
That is just being "in love", which any fool can do.
Being in love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides.

Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.
You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part.
Because this is what love is.

And this from the Velveteen Rabbit:

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you.
When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get
loose in the joints and very shabby.But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

And the girl finished it off by saying, ‘I have never known two people who are more real in their love than Lou and Tom,’ and
that she was glad they had found each other and she was sure they would still love each other when their hair got rubbed off
and they had loose joints.’

.... there wasn’t a dry eye in the house!

The downside? Well I damn me, I think I’m developing an allergy to alcohol – annoying as I barely drink and so really enjoy the odd glass when I fancy it! On the two most recent occasions that I’ve had red wine & champagne I have been violently sick a couple of hours later. ( This is after I’ve gone to bed not at the 'do' - It seems to be triggered by lying down) The true misery I have to say has been compounded on both occasions by creeping back to bed feeling like death and lying there in the darkness listening to the man in my life snoring like an asthmatic walrus! So, there goes my louche life style!

Summer's almost come and gone and - to be honest I'm not sure how it happened really. Last time I looked it was half past May and I was revving up for long flowery dresses and straw hats. There were great expectations of hot days and long balmy summer evenings spent outside - spending time in amongst the flowers, creepers and climbers, spraying for green fly while the vegetables I'd tended were being lovingly barbequed by the man in my life as he turned and basted slices of dead animal and we both sipped wine like people on the TV ads.

Ah well - I suppose there's always next year.

Talking of next year and the year after, I'm starting on the new book . I've got one coming out this week called 'Lessons in Love' , one early next year called Mum's the Word and have just started the one after that, due for publication some time in 2010 called 'Mother of the Bride'.

The research for M.o.B is making my live-in man anxious - us living in sin an' all - currently the bathroom is littered with bridal magazines and today I was overcome by a sudden urge to tell him that you - meaning 'one' obviously - could get married at a chapel in the Ice Hotel in the far reaches of the snowy north, the price to include reindeer. I think this may be some kind of a pick your own scheme where having been taken to the chapel in a reindeer powered sleigh you're able to select which one you want microwaved for the wedding feast -

Or you can get married in the zoo - what a great idea - fill that boring gap between the ceremony and fist fights breaking out between the relatives by looking at penguins and feeding the lemurs, I said.

Alternatively there are castles in Scotland - by now He has glazed over and is looking longingly at news that the cold war is about to begin again.

all new poo

I spent a long time yesterday buying shampoo, or more precisely not buying shampoo - it's a minefield. In my childhood you had bought Vosene, Silverkrin, Head and Shoulders or something for nits - and as far as I can remember no one died of shampoo related angst.

Now you need a degree to pick you way through the shelves. Is my hair curly but wistful with just a hint of defiance, or fine and windswept with a longing for the perfumed vistas of the Hindu Kush - Am I in need of some kind of intense treatment? Isn't serum something the gave Roger Moore when he had been bitten by a black mamba?

It was bad enough owning up to being greasy, normal or dry - You can't be normal anymore, there isn't a bottle of shampoo for it.

I bought what was on offer because the bottles go with my bathroom, and decided if challenged that a life that believes it can be improved by choosing the right shampoo isn’t worth improving.

making history

About four times a year I and two others, Andrea and Mary Jane,
working with BBC Voices in Norwich, run a short course on how to write your memoirs, called Making History.

It's a great little package, usually running for four, three hour sessions. It's full of inspirational ideas, great tips and is totally free - not only does it get you in the mood to write and hopefully give you the tools and the confidence to explore your creativity but at the end we record the final piece, so there’s a chance your story will be on air.

If you're interested then ring 01603 617411 and ask for the Voices office or email www. norfolk@bbc.co.uk and in the subject line put Making History Enquiry/ Voices.