Good morning! 6.34 am.

Dark wet start to the day.
I won’t be taking my usual walk up the garden in my dressing gown with my mug of tea right now.
I’m sitting up in bed (Stephen still asleep), listening to the odd passing car swishing by in the rain.
The Refuse Collectors, as they are named today, are going along the pavements moving the wheelie bins, which are left outside each house on the pavement every Tuesday morning. Everyone puts them out on a Monday evening ready. The big vehicle grinds slowly along. It stops every so often for the men to take each one to connect to the pick up mechanism which automatically lifts them up and then tips them to empty the contents into its interior.
How different to when I was younger. So much better for the men now who also do this necessary work in all kinds of weather.
Then they had to climb up our steep cobbled street up in the Rossendale Valley, Lancashire, and shoulder the bins to take them down again to be emptied. A lot of the contents were ash from the coal fires we all had for heating.
They were commonly known as “Ash chaps” or “Bin men” in my neck of the woods. It was dirty, physically hard graft.
It’s still not quite daylight on this gloomy Tuesday morning.
The robin is singing outside.
We’re heading towards the time when we change the clocks, putting them back by one hour. This year it’s the very last weekend of October..
“Fall back, Spring forward”
It is incredibly mild outside at 15C.
Scheduled to rise to the dizzy heights of 17C later. (This is unusual for October.) Some places could reach 20C before the weekend).