October, not much doing

Apart from our visit to London, October seems to have been a relatively quiet month.

There was, or so it felt, a dramatic drop in temperatures from 1 October. This not only triggered a desire for more soups and stews in our bellies, but also took a little toll on our health. It was all the encouragement we needed to sit inside and watch days of Heinekin Cup rugby coverage. Up to 3 games in an afternoon – what more encouragement did we need? That pretty much accounted for most of the weekends in the month.

All of that said, there were some non-rugby things we did this month. The middle 2 weekends in the month provided some spectacular weather,

Blackweir on the River Taff, with leaves starting to change colour

and increased the speed of change in the leaves on the trees.

Spectacular leaf colour

On one day we went for a walk amongst showers of leaves coming loose in the wind – spectacular, but didn’t come up well on photos unfortunately.

No really, there was a shower of leaves

There were also quite hazy days, so we had some spectacular effects amongst the trees in Bute Park on another walk.

View down the River Taff from the Blackweir footbridge

Haze and trees in Bute Park, Cardiff

Chris and Bron, Kathy’s parents, visited twice this month on their way to and from Ireland. They’ve been living in Europe for just over 18 months, but have now returned to New Zealand in preparation for Kathy’s Grandma’s 90^th birthday in November. The reason for their trip to Ireland was to sell the van Chris had bought when they first arrived in the Northern Hemisphere – back to the guy they’d originally bought it from. For us, the upside of that was that we were able to acquire a whole heap of stuff which would otherwise have been sold or thrown away, like kitchen scales and a few food stuffs, and so on.

October has also seen a change in the fresh food available, with lots of swedes and parsnips, mushrooms and apples, plums, pears and quinces appearing at the Farmer’s Market, and figs and pomegranates in the grocery stores. October also saw the start of the autumn lamb – sooooo delicious! And native oysters, which we sampled at a great lunch at the end of the month at a restaurant in Cardiff called Le Monde. The oysters were really, really great – quite large and really briny, but with quite a meaty texture so not at all snotty like Pacific Oysters. So far they vie in Kathy’s heart for fave oyster with Sydney Rock Oysters, those sweet little nuggets of deliciousness… We also experimented with the first of some game – guinea fowl. A bit like a slightly richer chicken – yummy though. At the lunch at Le Monde (which we had because Matt took the day off from work at the very end of the month) we also had a side dish of wild mushrooms in garlicky goodness, and Matt had the most enormous but perfectly cooked rack of lamb, and Kathy had a delicious fillet of beef. Mmmmm. Yummy wines this month were a Ropiteau Vin de pays d’Oc Pinot Noir 2007 and a Baroncini Vino Nobile de Montepulciano 2004.

Other things of note for the month were the re-opening of O’Neil’s at St Mary’s – which the observant of you will remember burnt down just after the final of the 2007/08 Heinekin Cup back around March/April, and the increasing appeal of the pub of an evening. Not only for the beer (which has improved dramatically since the landlord changed earlier in the month), but because it’s warm and cosy, and there are always people there. We also saw the Cohen Brother’s latest effort, Burn After Reading. I know that some people didn’t like it, but we’re fans of the Cohen Brothers and thought it was typically weird. Brad Pitt was very good in it – he really seemed to enjoy playing a stupid beef head. Oh, and most importantly for next summer we received confirmation of our purchase of tickets to Days 1 and 3 of the Ashes Test here in Cardiff. WOO HOO!!!!!

So, the nights have been drawing in sooner, and we’re starting to mentally prepare ourselves for a darker winter than what we’re used to. It now seems as though the earlier predictions of a white Christmas may not be correct, but who knows – there have already been a few snow falls this month as the autumn storms start to come through. Bring it on.