Garlic bread, A & E, vacuuming and nappies

The garlic bread worked wonderfully; crunchy crust, lovely and garlicky, very, uh, white. I look forward to testing the cranberry wholemeal bread.

I spent a couple of hours in A & E today because I stubbed my toe again. X-Ray showed that I have not now and never in the past broken or fractured that toe, but it's likely I dislocated it, and the muscles pulled it back into place (?) which is why it was still sore even before I stubbed it for the second time. So I can walk on it as much as I like, and take painkillers, and I'm unlikely to harm it more.

Autumn!

Leaves and puddles and cold, wet feet; pinked-up knuckles and central heat; bobble hats and knitted mitts; This is Autumn, yes it is!

A little girl and a toddler girl will waddle through this winter with me, in boots and hats and gloves and scarves and hoods, and I can't wait. I want snow and chestnuts and huge, splashy puddles. I want hats with earflaps and gloves so big I can't bend my fingers. I want flasks of hot chocolate (we've had several of those already and boy are they a good idea!) and mornings with slippers and dressing gowns. I want winter!

I've already started trying to explain Halloween to Linnea, though I don't know quite how to have a proper one with bobbing for apples and so on. We always did when I was a child, and made costumes and went trick or treating. Trick or treating first, since you can't do it very well with wet hair.

I might invite a bunch of people over. It's a Wednesday. We could bob for apples in the baby bath, and coins in the washing up bowl, and have an apple on a string. Or perhaps people care enough about hygiene now that we'd have to have separate bowls for each family, or even each child... well, at least I can make a barm brack and put a ring in it. And perhaps colcannon as well; I bet the market will have kale.

Toddler trick-or-treating will have to be carefully managed. I can think of three houses on the street we can go to, definitely; I might start asking people if they'd mind, soon. People in this country can be very unpredictable about it, I've found. And the tricks tend to the malicious, rather than the amusing.