Reinstated posting #2 The last week of October

Haha tracked down some more...

The last week of October

... and the first real frost of the winter this morning. Wakened rudely by a cold Mini clambering into bed with me (he WILL not keep his quilt on him!) I spent a few minutes enjoying the sunshine coming in through the bedroom windows, before venturing outside to let the birds out. It was then I realised that part of the reason for the morning's brightness was the frost lying quite thickly everywhere - very pretty if you are inside a nice warm house but, I can assure you, less welcome as the cold seeps through your wellies if you are lazy like me and can't be bothered to put socks on first!

It WAS beautiful though - I wish I'd had my camera on me as the sunshine sparkled on the frost and shone on Sebastien (my HUGE light-blue boy) because it looked like a picture from a fairy tale about the Ice Queen. He, however, was more interested in scarfing up what remained in his food bowl - typical man.

It's things like the first frost which remind me it's not long now before November and the start of Samhain (in Welsh Nos Galan Gaeaf) - the old Celtic Feast of the Dead - which I still keep, although admittedly not in the serious way the old folk did when I was a child. To me, it's a time for hunkering down next to the Aga with some good friends and family, good food (and of course good wine!), and talking about the old times (and the times to come). The candles will be in my western window and although I don't share the old belief that the dead can come and commune with the living again, an extra place will be set at the table and we'll do the other little things which, to me, are the small thread running between myself and my family, alive or dead. For Mini, it's a time where people come and visit, we have even more substantial meals than normal, and we talk about people of whom he can know nothing but whose names will hopefully live on in his memory. For nobody has truly died as long as they are still remembered....