…to celebrate at our local pub. Particularly the last one, apparently.

Autumn does seem particularly colourful this year. I walked to work through Regent’s Park yesterday morning, and the trees were lovely.

Amanita muscaria toadstool in the woods at Walberswick

Is it wrong to think that one of the benefits of living in Essex is that you can easily escape to the next county (or two) up?

We went to Lowestoft to visit Rich’s mum, and spent much of Saturday in Norwich. I’ve always liked Norwich – particularly the market – but we don’t get to go often from Chelmsford. Perhaps that’s why it’s still special.

Anyhow, we did the usual – wandered around the shops, looked at the river, went to see Rich’s old college and watched the puppet man from a table outside Starbucks. It was quite nice to see him there as we both thought we’d seen something on the BBC about him retiring on the news a couple of years ago. Turns out we were right. I guess he had second thoughts.

Like that? Check out his YouTube channel.

Anyhow, that was Saturday. On Sunday, after a lazy morning of breakfast and cards, we headed out to Blythburgh, and a walk in the woods at Walberswick. They’ve just kidnapped a herd/flock/pod of 26 ponies from Dartmoor and released them in the woods, and over the course of two hours we spotted 17 of them. Not a bad rate considering the density of the trees when you get away from the paths.

They were so friendly they were happy to be tickled and stroked and have their picture taken at very close quarters.

Despite it being a pine forest, which keeps its greens throughout the year, the air felt distinctly autumnal. The sun went down quickly, the air cooled, and the damp, shady parts were home to a generous crop of brilliant red toadstools. The seasons are changing.

Dartmoor pony at Walberswick

Very annoyingly pick-pocketed today. I should have seen it really. In Nero with Tim, coat on the back of my chair, when three women came in and started shuffling around with the tables. They went without drinking anything, and when we got up to leave my inside pocket was open and the iPod inside it gone.

It could have been worse: it could have been my wallet, or I might have caught them in the act and it could all have turned nasty. So perhaps a lucky escape.

It’s all such a faff, though. It was a touch, set up for email, so it had the last 50 messages from each of my accounts in its memory. It had my contacts and calendars and even Evernote, so whoever’s now got it can get in and look at my notes.

I’ve set it to remotely wipe using MobileMe, so next time it finds a network it should be cleaned down and all that data disappear, but how long till that occurs, and what will happen between now and then?

It’s a bit of a sobering thought, how much data we carry around on us in the connected world, and it’s only when it goes walking that you stop and think. Is a zip on a pocket really adequate protection for all of those contacts, all of those notes and the contents of your inbox?

Hindsight, as ever, is spot-on 20:20.

Our cat is a great mouser. Most days you can expect to find a rodent of some type or other discarded in the grass. Sometimes he brings them inside – usually alive – and drops them under the bed while you’re still in it. I think he thinks it’s funny.

Most often, though, he eats them.

And then leaves bits lying around.

Why, I don’t know, but he tends to eat the heads and shoulders and leave the fleshy bits. Perhaps he likes the crunch.

The result: coming home to find two half mice – trousers and feet alone – in the hall and lounge.

Editing the book is going to take a long time, I think. I’m about half way through chapter one at the moment – on only the first edit – and already been at it two weeks. There are 33 chapters in all, so you can work out for yourself how long it would take to complete at that rate.

And then, of course, you’d start on the second edit.

I looked at the stats for chapter one and it’s taken 943 minutes so far. That’s editing and writing. Or, in other words, 15 hours 43 minutes. It sounds like a lot until you realise that it’s actually less than two working days. The trouble is, when your working days are taken up actually working, you don’t have that much time for writing and editing.