Slow November, an experimental Mince Pie or Two

October has slipped away on mild winds and stormy showers, Samhain has been and gone, the clock gone back, and despite the mildness visiting winter thrushes have begun to arrive. Stags and Bucks have ceased their roaring; Pheasants strut and crow amongst the stubble startled by their own shadow, whilst the brown Hare lops unhurriedly along straight furrow and gangs of Longtail Tits swing through every Hawthorn hedgerow.

As so often recently, November weather brings bands of heavy rain washing all before it, twigs, branches, drifts of leaves, not yet the golden colours that the season dictates, filling drain and ditch. Intervals between rain bring sunshine and rainbows, bright golden rays like the theatre lights between act one and two, raucous bands of jackdaws, crows, black-headed gulls, give an audience applause.

Like clouds across the waxing moon November drifts along on strangely warm frostless nights, darker evenings, slower mornings - slow November, slow days, slow mornings, two cups of tea. Evening darkness, early dusk, a pile of new books, cosy, thoughtful, drifting thoughts, mindful thoughts, wandering thoughts, dreaming. Time drifts like bonfire smoke, an extinguished candle, thin trails of cloud across a peach sunset over western hills. Like the buried seeds beneath the ground, we hunker down, on moonless nights and dark stormy days we savour the feeling of hiding away, of resting up, becoming something of a hermit for a while.

November, slow November, a comma pause, before life speeds up with the run up to December festivals, Solstice, the returning light, Christmas, New Year parties, weeks of exuberant celebrations seeming to begin earlier each year and finish later, crashing loudly into the new calendar year. The days, when on a trip into town, your senses seem to be bombarded with sensations of brightness and sparkle and noise that override the more subtle country visions of winter green holly and shining, glossy leaved ivy, the scent of pine and shadowy glow of candle and firelight, hearty stews and rich fruit cakes.

A slow November brings the opportunity to notice nature, how, whilst you are ambling through life other creatures are bustling busily around, instinct driving them to stock up and store reserves to see them through the coldness of January and February, before the hidden buried life bursts skywards with green exuberance foretelling future abundance.

We may miss the November fogs and frosts of childhood that more recently have been replaced by mild wet and windy weather. We may sigh over memories of foggy bonfire nights when mother wrapped you up in duffle coat and woolly scarf, mittens to keep our hands warm as we held those annual sparklers whilst stamping booted feet to keep toes from going numb, or the frosty mornings when your breath came out in clouds and you slipped and slid your way to the bus stop. But the mildness and brightness of golden sunlit breaks between rain makes autumn strolls and rambles through muddy woodland strangely pleasant, being un-muffled and free of insulating layers, hats often being needed simply to keep the low sun from your eyes rather than for warmth.

Walking beneath Oak and Birch, beside yellow bloom studded winter gorse, a movement might catch our eye in a gully of drab brown leaves and suddenly there comes a flash of bright green and yellow feathers, a splash of red, a bright eye, and up flies a Green Woodpecker with looping flight and a scolding yaffle cry of indignation at our untimely disturbance. Badgers have dug in the playground turf, leaving little piles and trails of mud as if a football game has been abandoned mid match, children rushing home for tea. In woodlands and pasture, encouraged by the damp and the warmth, fungi appear, pushing through leaf mould and turf, fairy book toadstools of red and gold, puffballs and pointed inkcaps, fairy rings of buff umbrellas both tiny and huge and turkey tail brackets.

Sometimes first light is accompanied by Robin song and the Druid bird, other times dawn is proclaimed loudly by the Song Thrush, or maybe the Blackbird, who has spent the first couple of weeks of the month whispering and muttering, testing out his winter song, might let go a series of fluting notes building into something more tuneful. On cool bright mornings, as the Tawny Owls hoots fade, a chorus of song will rise with the sun.

Slow November, rambling November - sometimes a couple of miles or three of ambling, strolling through mud and wet leaves or across soft downland turf, along winding lanes, there may be the reward of a seat in a pub garden with low, unseasonably warm, sun in your eyes as you sip your pint whilst watching the lazy aerobatic efforts of a cruising Red Kite against the western sky. Maybe soon a chill in the November air will drive us inside to consume our Guinness, in warmth, at leisure, beside a crackling log fire and back at home the growing, thickening darkness will encourage thoughts of coming celebrations, the planning of winter recipes to cook, hot wild apple and cinnamon tea in a favourite mug, maybe an early experimental mince pie or two.