October News

The month ends in an ocean of worry for a friend who is missing in the Haute Savoie region of France. Carol was last seen on Sunday 27 October and no-one has been able to contact her since. She often went hiking in the mountains near where she lived  but never left indications of her plans with anyone so searching for her cannot be narrowed down very easily, especially as her car, a black Fiat Panda 4x4 licensed AZ522AP, has not been found. If anyone reading this feels they could help in the search in any way at all, either on the ground or with communications, please look at the Facebook page members of her family have set up for information.

Early in the month I heard from friends in Utah that their daughter-in-law, currently in Japan, had been taken to hospital with a threatened miscarriage. Margaret flew to Tokyo to help with the toddler. On 2 October the baby was delivered weighing 3lb. Last I heard he was doing well and Margaret flew back home in good time for her youngest son's wedding on the 26th.

Back here the inconvenience of having our car off the road for five and a half days for a major repair, the fitting of a new (well... secondhand; it's such an old rattletrap that 'new' parts no longer exist) rear axle pales into insignificance.

There was a parent's evening at Toadlet's school. I met five of her teachers. Liked them all. She's brilliant at art and chatting in class. No surprises there. She is much better at Maths and French than she thinks she is. And I was amused in particular by her PE teacher's assessment. He put it more diplomatically but he has clearly sussed her other great talents – a penchant for stubbornness (a useful trait; let's not knock it) and a certain scattiness. I seem to remember my mother rolling her eyes about my scattiness at a similar age. So, in short, she's doing fine. This month also marked the official start of her teenagerdom. One of her birthday presents was a trip to a hairdresser to get her hair purple dip dyed. It's much nicer than I thought it would be. In fact, I positively like it!

With a Rotary partner, Mary, I've been involved with setting up a Rotakids club at Luss Primary School, the same school that did the Loch Lomond Powan fish project which I spoke about here. We've had an initial chat with the kids and we'll get started properly next Tuesday.

Last night at Cubs we did a lantern walk – tea light in decorated marmalade jars (knew they'd come in handy) held on a stick with wire. About half of the time was spent re-lighting lanterns. Hey ho, ;-). We'd left Sumbdy's Dad back at the scout hut in charge of a camp-fire and cooking Bratwurst (we've had a German theme to our Global Challenge this term) which we ate dipped in tomato sauce that had had some mild curry powder mixed into it. All except one of the Cubs loved it. It was a fine night, which was a great bonus as the rain earlier in the day had been positively tropical, in its ferocity if not its temperature.

When I went out to empty the compost bucket this morning, I was surprised and delighted to see this lovely yellow dahlia, growing out of the compost heap but on the field side of the fence.

I shall call this the Hope Flower for Carol

Just near there is the old bird cherry tree with its fascinating gnarled growth. On the right of the following picture is where a large branch has been removed many years ago and where the sulphur polypore fungus grows in the summer.

Sulphur polypore fungus on 9 June

Looking up at some of the younger branches and their autumnal leaves

Autumnal peony leaves

Sunrise at the beginning of the month

And at the end

I leave you with the rain belting down again after a sunny morning and pleased to hear just now that the police in France have finally started an official search for Carol.