We get a lot of spiders.

These were everywhere throughout September and October. Its hazardous to be a flying insect.

The wild flower meadows in the Park stay in bloom long into November. Its a lovely splash of colour but a bit unnerving to be out this late. This photo was from August, hence the stronger light, but there’s a comparable number of flowers still out.

They start drilling for oil at Sainsburys. Actually they are pile driving for the blocks of flats they are building on the old car park. Presumably they will make a fortune selling or renting the flats, and have an almost captive customer base that just has to pop downstairs to get to the shop. One commercial version of a 15 minute neighbourhood.

Diwali at VBs cash and carry – where you can buy spices by the hundredweight and jute sacks of Jagari – and the fireworks are mostly sold out; the check out workers are all wearing Saris, lipstick and dripping with jewellery. The elderly people queueing outside Pooja and Gayatri sweetmarts are contrastingly dull in anonymous anoraks in different shades of mud.

The local library puts on a display for COP26. This is a rather pretty selection from the children’s section. What we really need is something large, serious and adult and maybe some talks. Perhaps next year – as these discussions will get more and more urgent and the need for popular awareness and commitment more and more apparent. In a “red alert for humanity” it seems to me that we should be hearing the sound of klaxons permanently as we walk down the street to wake us all up.

When melancholy Autumn comes to Wembley
And electric trains are lighted after tea
The poplars near the stadium are trembly
With their tap and tap and whispering to me,
Like the sound of little breakers
Spreading out along the surf-line
When the estuary’s filling
With the sea.

From Harrow on the Hill by John Betjeman.