Someone once told me that there is no higher point between the spire of King’s College Chapel in Cambridge and that of the Cathedral of Ss Peter and Paul in St Petersburg, so the biting easterly winds we are so used to in the East essentially whip in straight off the Urals. Regardless of whether this is true, East Anglia is besieged by winter cold in a way that I imagine would be alien to you if you lived in a Cornish valley. Winter is just starting to make its assault.  Last week, when I staggered out after dinner to gather the children’s school bags from the car, for the first time this year little sparkles winked up at me from the brick path. But the cold has only just begun to wrap itself around our garden in Essex and the season doesn’t truly know itself yet. The week before, I was still shooing sleepy wasps drunk on fruit from the orchard out of the nursery.  Throughout the year twigs are gathered as kindling from wherever they can be found and there is now a giant stack in one corner of the barn. Large boughs felled in previous years have been waiting for the attention of the axe, and now I need to split them down into usable size. Once this job is done, and the log store generally put in order, I will feel I have taken a stand against the impending season.