I wouldn’t normally bring up the weather here, but we’ve suddenly been hit by some vicious and slightly weird stuff. Wild, wet and windy is what we’ve come to expect in the winter on the west coast, but thunder and lightning in November is a bit strange and we have hail – OK I know I said snow – but it looks like snow and is white and cold.

Yeh, yeh, and it also looks like I’ve emptied a couple of bags of sugar outside my studio door – it is in fact a small hail drift. Luckily my door opens in the way – I expect I’ll be digging my way out tomorrow.

So why all the fuss? Well, we don’t get much in the way of white stuff around here in the winter, due to the Gulf Stream  warming effect, so a little bit of icy precipitation causes a shimmer of excitement.  And I’m a grown up – imagine how the kids react.