It's May and I am quietly happy. I have begun another study program online (The Great Courses), am preparing to build a new garage, am enjoying the turning and falling of the leaves and a new relationship has been gently blossoming. Never mind that the previous sentence should have been perhaps two sentences ( I will leave this chore to my editor), for this half-glass-full period is well and truly upon me. When will the winds turn?

Winter is barely a month away but I invariably enjoy its onset. It is not until August that I start to wonder when I might wear shorts again and be unencumbered by coats and layers. My house is not well-suited to cold weather, or hot weather, for that matter. That is a bit like me, for spring is always a happy uncladding and autumn, more a prolonged end to a feast whose beginning I have long forgotten.

Now, it is dark and really quite mild outside. Tom is at a drumming workshop of the touring African Children's Choir. Later this week my own choir will support these brilliant Ugandans at a concert in Penrith. Wisely foregoing any African songs we might know, we will sing mostly Western pop and folk arrangements. Just as we should, given the competition!