*I did this face in about five minutes flat, having realised it was not half an hour to the child’s bedtime and we hadn’t carved a face. Halloween is not one of those things you can do the day after. I may have modelled it on my own dismayed face brought on by slack parenting.

*I have done my back in. This seems a cruel and unnecessary reminder of my advancing years. It was almost better but then I jumped off a stile because I was being chased by a horse (I say chased. I mean the horse was ambling after me slowly. But my friend mentioned the deer in Nara who bit my bum in search of biscuits and I panicked.) I am currently in love with the wee adhesive heat patches you can stick on, which seem to be the best thing for it, but I’m still doing everything v.e.r.y. s.l.o.w.l.y.

*I joined the ranks of people who can speak to their phone to Get Things Done. (Siri, the voice assistant on the iPhone 4s.) I thought it would be rubbish but it isn’t, and I can add things to a groceries list as I pootle around the kitchen, which means that when I do my online shopping I actually get the stuff we need. Big breakthrough.

*I started making a baby blanket from the yarn i got at Ally Pally, and I also did some sewing at my desk again. It felt good to have busy hands again.

*I also made welsh cakes at home for the first time ever. They were amazing, and I only tried them because it was a rainy day and they don’t require much in the way of dairy produce (online shopping failure yet again). Most of the ingredients are dry and will just be hanging around in your cupboard. You don’t need a griddle pan – a frying pan is just as good.

*I keep expecting Winter to arrive, but so far it hasn’t and we’ve been making the most of the fair weather while we can. There’ll be enough dark and bitter days in the coming months, and the clock change only hastens them in. The sun set at 4.45 today. We were still in the park, still had energy to burn. It makes less and less sense to me to have more light at 6am than at 5pm, but this might have a lot to do with my child now waking at 6.30 instead of 7.30.

*As if I didn’t have enough going on I set up a tumblr, purely for pictures from my iPhone and Instagram. I’m finding time passes so quickly now, and the business of toddlers makes it harder and harder to record things (witness this poor neglected blog), and often the only thing I have time for is a quick snap with the camera in my phone. But at least I have that.

*And apparently it’s November now. What the hell happened to this year?