Equinox blues

It doesn't seem right but only a few weeks after noticing the leaves are turning to autumn shades we are now at a point in the year where day and night are equal length and from tomorrow we rush headlong to winter. Longer nights than days mean either we stumble around outside in the dark or we stay inside and do jobs indoors waiting for springtime. There is a lot to do, currently I am reading up how to make bacon and butcher pigs.

Its a strange time at The Rock, Ben is about to go to Cyprus where his regiment is stationed for two years. Hopefully he will be home before Christmas and not in Afghanistan. Bethan is about to go to Canada, only for a fortnight but its still a big step for her, mind you she has had experience of solo foreign travel, she lost her passport and instead of flying out to Antigua with her brother to meet Tracey and I she spent two worrying days in the passport office at Newport before getting the vital document that allowed her to join us in the Caribbean.

On top of those anxieties its a year since I fell off the gallery landing in the workshop. We were talking about it last night, how I spent 8 and a half hours on the operating table as they tried to sort the mush out that was my left arm. Thankfully the surgeon was a very skilled one and a year on its returning to some sort of normality. One more operation should remove the last of the metal and pins and then I should be able to start Physiotherapy.

So today I have been ultra careful, no walking under ladders, no crossing the paths of black cats and no driving Rene with the volume on the cd player at 13.

I took a walk before dinner with Apollo who as you can see is keen on making friends with the two horses on the hill. We collected a rucksac of apples without being shouted at or being accosted by naked hermits. I managed to get home despite a sense of forboding without hurting myself. It was almost dark by the time we got home, you could smell autumn in the air, roll on the spring.