We are enjoying a few days of glorious September sunshine - there is something magical about the quality of light you get in autumn as the sun gets lower in the sky. I am sorry last Saturday's wedding wasn't yesterday as the weather was so much nicer.

After several hours of concentrated effort I managed to get the wedding photo editing FINISHED and ended up with around 350 photos; we probably won't use them all but when we add in Phil's pics too we should have a good selection for the couple. It was such a nice feeling to finish; 500+ photos are a lot to go through!

On Friday night I'd cooked a new recipe called Vegetable Tagine; it sounded great and was full of delicious vegetables and spices. I doled out generous helpings and we all sat down to eat. Well, it was DISGUSTING!! It takes some talent to make something so foul out of so many nice ingredients. My kind family were manfully eating it but looked incredibly relieved when I said I couldn't eat mine. So it was fish and chips all round which tasted great!

I haven't had many cooking failures in my life but funnily enough they have all been veggie recipes! There was my first ever veggie meal; apple & lentil loaf which was just about edible and a macaroni cheese where I got the sauce/pasta quantities wrong and ended up with a kind of rubbery glue! The worst ever, though, was the Linda McCartney Christmas roast which cost a fortune to make and was supposed to replace the turkey; it smelled like sweaty feet and went straight in the bin! Last's night's effort was almost as bad as that!

Yesterday was great; we enjoyed watching Sian riding and after lunch Phil and I went for a long walk. Sian was off to a sleepover and the rest of us enjoyed an impromptu BBQ. I made a salad with home-grown tomatoes and there were three ears of corn just ready to pick and grill - yum.

Looks like being another gorgeous day today - could this be a "barbecue autumn" instead of the "barbecue summer" the Met office promised us early in the year?