October always starts with a long weekend here, and with our city still in strict lockdown that meant opportunities for long walks, baking, reading and watching TV.

I also took our eldest for another little driving lesson and that’s coming along nicely. And I read my review copy of Michael D. O’Brien’s latest novel, The Sabbatical. He isn’t giving interviews this time around but I’ll try to find out this week anyway whether it will have a sequel. I want there to be one!

In this book he revives a character from The Father’s Tale and returns to apocalyptic themes, with all the usual hallmarks that fans will love – it’s an intellectually-charged action thriller, rich in layered symbolism and imagery, literary references, iconography, grounded in a Christian anthropology.

There are some references to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in the book, which I enjoyed as I’m currently reading LOTR and so can understand them better! I wonder what new readers of him would think of his slow-measured pacing at times though. I’ll write a more detailed review for The Catholic Weekly.

In the evening we’ve been watching episodes of The Mysterious Benedict Society with the kids and quite enjoying its quirkiness, the music, and the costumes! If you’ve got kids of very different ages (or nephews, nieces, grandkids) I’d love to know what’s your favourite family-friendly series that everyone will watch without any complaints?

The spring school holidays end today so everyone will go back to remote learning and work. Books I ordered for the boys to read are only arriving today (late, sigh!). They will plug a couple of gaps in our Rangers Apprentice collection and the Story Treehouse books.

Daylight savings time kicked in yesterday, the days are warm and Christmas puddings have been on supermarket shelves for a while, so there’s a definite years’ end vibe in the air.

The end of the lockdown scheduled for this month is in sight and our wedding anniversary is tomorrow 💖

Pictured are the amaretti biscuits my husband made on Sunday. Here’s the recipe he used. We used to order them with coffee and chinottto every Saturday morning at a local Italian cafe and patisserie in our pre-marriage days nearly 20 years ago now…