Travels with my camera

Winter arrived this morning, god I was cold. Got up and had a hot shower to try and warm up. Emma is being a pain in the arse too, she won't settle as soon as it's light in the mornings, which of course is an hour earlier now the clocks have altered. Fed up with her pacing up and down the room, scratching at the bedroom door at 5.30 onwards. I ignored her for half an hour this morning, but then had to relent, let her out in the garden, made a coffee and back to bed with the laptop. I guess I should think myself lucky I actually had 6 hours solid sleep last night.

The thing I notice most of all here is the noise. I swear I will never moan about noise where I live again. There is noise all the time, every waking hour, mainly from planes going overhead on the Luton flight path, this constant roaring noise, and also from the A1M, which is only about half a mile away. I can hear the tyre noise of them non-stop going up and down the road. It's hell. Such a shame, this village is very rural, lots of green open spaces, trees, woodland, and they are now sandwiched between the A1M, the M25 and Luton's runway! I couldn't live here again. Another thing struck me though today, the trees. Everywhere you go there are beautiful trees in all their autumnal colours. I don't see a lot of that along the roadsides where I live. It's all farmland with hacked down hedges or fencing now. The woods are nearly all forestry commission, don't see many deciduous ones at all.

Today, we went to a couple of garden centres, just to look round, not to buy anything in particular, and had some lunch in the restaurant. This was on the Codicote to Hitchin road. I saw some things though that I just had to have, lol. I bought Emma a baby! And then I bought Emma's baby a baby! And after that I saw some hedgehog ornaments, and I just had to have one of those too. They are fabulous, and I think I may well start a collection of those, I've got nearly a hundred Cherished Teddies already, and also a few elephant figurines, but these have really captured my heart. I looked up the web address when I got home - its http://www.bowbrookstudios.co.uk/hedgehogs.html. They do all sorts of things, not just hedgehogs.

Stopped and took Emma round Stanborough Lakes on the way back. I used to take my other cavalier there, Amy. Brought back some memories, but was amazed to see the swimming pool was gone! It's now just a huge overgrown weed bed!

Tonight I am off over a friends for a chin wag, haven't seen her for almost four years, won't stop long, and in a way, wish I hadn't said I'd go, it's bloody freezing out there!