Hurrah!  I have found my way back - having been lost in the complex corridors of Windows Live for the past month!  Back, enjoying the autumn colours and, today, the wind and rain (seen through my window panes!)
It has been very frustrating to see my blog space only from a distance, unable to enter it and, although helped by the Team, unable to rectify the situation until tonight - after a couple of hours of labour this afternoon! Yippee!
I have not been idle - since I was last here I have travelled all over the place - a whistle-stop tour of Scotland and northern England.  I have been reading and : reading - lapping up 3 books by Jane: Northanger Abbey, Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice.  Now I am enjoying watching Emma on TV and am beginning to feel I should vary my diet a bit!  So I managed a murder mystery the other day and have just dug out half a dozen very varied books from my secret TBR pile, for the next few weeks and days - whilst the weather keeps me indoors.
Autumn-cleaning (I never could manage it in spring) is going well.  The house has now reached the "Very Messy With Some Tidy Areas" stage - which, as all who have indulged in such activity will know, is some way from the "I Wish I'd Never Started This" stage!
The vegetables are still trickling in from the untidy garden - and I am enjoying contriving 'free' meals.  The veg patch tidy up can wait for better weather. 
The sewing bag has surfaced and is lurking in a corner of the sitting room ready to catch me in my idle moments.  Letter-writing is looming and I know I am behind with the birthday card list.  Oh dear!
Never mind, lots of other things are going well and just as long as I keep moving I shan't sink!
Here goes .... my first bell-ringing lesson for a decade.  Out into the wind and rain!