My arthritic leg is a lot better but still painful to walk upstairs and downstairs, I am hoping that it may be due to the recent drop in temperature – at least I have a nice new fashionable walking stick! Will be interesting to see how it is when we go to Madrid on Thursday. We had dinner at friends Sylvia and Rob's place on Saturday, very English, they live in a thatched cottage in a picture book village in Oxfordshire, Sylvia had cooked pheasant which was lovely, the gravy so tasty as she had boiled all the bits and pieces of a pheasant they had had the week before so really tasty stock used. Pheasant came from a 'Boundry shoot' of the Blenheim estate this is a shoot for the estate staff and invited locals and starts on the boundary working inwards. On Wednesday we had dinner with NZ friends Kaye and Bernie, they live in a lovely part of Gloucestershire, (could not believe I had left my camera in Caversham) another glorious cottage attached to a 'big house' where they are sort of caretakers, the owners live in Chelsea London during the week (coincidently she is a NZer) and they come to the house for the weekend, we met the owners' two delightful spaniels who occasionally stay down in the country rather than returning to Chelsea. Kaye had cooked duck, so tender, cooked for three hours slowly and gravy was made with chopped up beetroot, delicious and the mashed potatoes and celeriac Laurie says was very good. We have been making use of our £20.00 pensioner's train passes (save 1/3 the cost of rail travel), and went into Somerset House yesterday to meet Lois who runs the House Exchange website we use, and I also had a look at the Tiffany exhibition – beautiful... The weather has turned a bit colder although Sunday was beautiful but at last there is a feeling of Autumn in the air – clocks went back on Saturday night and now dark by about 4.30pm.