All is safely gathered in...

We came back from our short holiday in Rye on Friday still talking about what a good time we'd had with our friends Katy, Tilly, Tallulah and Oscar. It was one of the best visits we've had, and that's saying something.

No sooner were we back than the harvest had to be got in. We've already had the gooseberries, but here are the apples (variety James Grieve) picked by our friend Tom. I gathered what are probably the last of the blackberries, and our neighbours gave us some of their Victoria plums. All very skrumshus, to be Daisy Ashford about it, and free into the bargain! I must try to cook the windfalls soon - my favourite way with cooking apples is to butter them: to a pan of chopped and peeled apples, add a glass of white wine and two good thick slices of salted butter, plus a couple of tablespoons of sugar if known to be wanted for sweet purposes, and cook until softly chunky - for me the butter rounds out the taste of the apple.

You mean people still do this?

Ooh look, a train station! The Gare du Nord in Paris, to be precise. Not very long ago, either. So, contrary to the current television news coverage, it is still possible to get about without flying.

Listening to BBC Breakfast this morning, it was borne in upon me to what extent the right to take a plane absolutely everywhere really is taken for granted now. Woeful tales of coming from Rome by train, crossing the Channel by boat, and going to Belfast via Scotland (Stranraer) - sheer torture, evidently. Any of these was quite normal even twenty years ago, because flying was so expensive, and they could actually be the most pleasant and meaningful ways of getting there. Yes, I love flying, but my journeys by land and sea were considerable adventures in their own right, and a real indication that I'd travelled hundreds of miles - I don't suppose I'll ever forget the moonlit journey to Stranraer to catch the ferry to Belfast, or getting on board a ferry from a motorboat off the coast of Norway, or seeing the hustle and bustle of Basle station in the early hours of the morning. Clearly sometimes a flight is justified, and I sympathise enormously with those travellers who are now stranded, but maybe we need to go back to the significance of the journey as part of a holiday, rather than just rushing to get there?