Grateful for this morning’s wonderful and ideal running weather: cool, a little drizzle, no ice and, most importantly, no wind.

Lack of time thwarted our plans to make this a bumper edition. Instead, we kept it short, publishing only regular articles and news and information about village events and the new pandemic rules. Next month will be very full!

We dedicated the November edition of the news to remembering those who had died, particularly during the two world wars. We were fortunate to have people in the village and from around the world with long memories or access to family records.

It has been a surprise and a joy to reconnect with long lost friends – twice – in the last few days.

This beautifully crafted story of espionage starts in Paris in 1943 and ends with the murder of an elderly woman in the car park of the Gare d’Orléans in 2018.

For a small village, its surprising how much goes on, from crop rotation to flying tree branches, serendipity to drawing, sloe gin to kite flying.

This is a time of year to rise above the dust and mist of change that obscures our higher vision

For Helen Macdonald, author of Vesper Flights, swifts seem to her to be ‘the closest thing to aliens on Earth.’

The wreckage of the table after the last guest has left. Reinforcing friendships and sharing views is so much more important than simply breaking bread together.

Author Anne Lamott, often described as ‘the people’s author’, offers these appealing life truths in her TED talk