I don’t know about you, but logic tells me that there is no more reason to make a resolution to do something better / more / less on the first of January than on any other day of the year. And also that there is no more reason to believe we will succeed in sticking to that resolution then rather than on a different date.
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After a busy September, October and November (Paris / Chicago / Madagascar / Paris) it was rather pleasant to have a quieter month. Not that I’ve been doing nothing!
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November is NOT one of my favourite months. Yes, there is still plenty of autumn colour, in the first part of the month at least. But here in the UK there are many more dull November days than bright, or so it seems to me. And with the clocks going back at the end of October, darkness falls by late afternoon.
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September has been a lovely month, in several ways. The weather improved considerably compared to July and August, with a mini heatwave at the start of the month. I had two fantastic trips abroad and some fun activities closer to home too.
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Summer has been in rather short supply this year, although August has given us some nice days. On the whole, however, it has continued July’s pattern of unseasonably cool and damp weather, again due to that stubbornly stuck jet stream.
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We’ve had more than our fair share of cooling showers this month, not to mention the odd downpour. But heat has been in short supply. After June’s heatwave our weather seemed to flip and many days this month have felt more like October than July!
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For me this past June has been one of more than usually changeable weather. I started the month inside the Arctic Circle where in the first few days of meteorological summer the temperature didn’t rise above six or seven degrees Celsius and was often colder than that. I then returned to a London going into its first heatwave of the summer, hitting thirty degrees on a couple of days. Towards the end of the month the temperature dropped to the more usual, and comfortable, low to mid-twenties.
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May is an especially lovely month in England. At the start of the month spring is at its height, while by the end there are hints of the summer to come. With spring being late this year, the early part of May felt more like April, with chilly winds and frequent showers. But the trees were green at last after the winter bareness, and there were flowers everywhere!
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As well as being a successful novelist and poet, Vita Sackville-West is known for the beautiful gardens she created at Sissinghurst in Kent. She will have welcomed April as all gardeners do … but maybe not the April we have had this year.
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With a slow start to the spring this year it’s felt at times as if March was coming in more like a polar bear than a lion! We had sharp winds, frosts and even some snow as far south as London, although nothing like what they had further north. And even when the weather started to warm up, sunshine was in short supply.