The nights are shorter, the days are colder, the new issue of Vogue weighs more than a toddler… it must be the new season, darlings! I love AUTUMN.

New boots, new coats, new scarves, gloves and jumpers… all my favourite things. (Yes, but unfortunately the summer holiday credit card bill has just landed)
So a much cheaper way to spend any spare time is at the very last of the fruit picking, which I force my family to do. Oh yes, I load them into the car kicking and screaming, we go to one of those pick your own places. And of course, they get totally into it and then I have to pull them kicking and screaming out of the blackcurrent/ bramble bushes because we’ve got 10 kilos of each and there’s no way I’m going to have enough jars to make all that into jam.

Come the end of summer, my inner country girl emerges and has to be making jam. My Mum has always done this for as long as I can remember and now my youngest sister and I have joined in.

I can’t recommend it enough. (Plus all your friends will be astonished and convinced you are a domestic high priestess when you hand them jars of homemade jam as presents.) You don’t even need to make massive quantities of the staff. Boiling up two punnets of berries, is just as satisfying as boiling up 20.

I’ve always found it totally easy… until last night when I made 8 enormous jars of blackcurrent (a total beginner’s jam… blackcurrent never goes wrong!) But looking at it this morning… it hasn’t set properly!!! I nearly cried! So now I need to find 101 things to do with blackcurrent coulis. (Coulis! So very 80s)

I want to mention a lovely letter I received from the real Annie Valentine! She lives in Leeds and after writing to me to complain (nicely!) that she’s had to walk past billboards declaring she can’t find a perfect man, she decided to give the book a whirl.

Anyway, not only did she totally enjoy it but it inspired her to tackle the looming outfit crisis in her life: what to wear to her daughter’s wedding, which is going to bring together her ex-husband and his new wife, not to mention all the ex-relatives she hasn’t seen for seven years. Yikes! But on the advice of the fictional Annie Valentine, she braved a posh frock shop, met a charming sales assistant and is now feeling much happier about the big day. So that’s just fantastic! Brought a tear to my eye…