Down Gypsy Patch Lane

For the last few weeks, even the seasons have been packed up into boxes – or have at least passed unnoticed in a frenzy of sorting and storing.  Except for when I’ve been to the local tip.

There are lots of things I love about our tip, viz:

·         It’s not really a tip, it’s a recycling centre which is a laudable and fine thing to be even if ‘M’off down the tip’ is a far more satisfying thing to yell to your co-habitees. (Sounds like hard work but really it's just an excuse for a break from lugging boxes about.)

·         You have to go down Gypsy Patch Lane to get there, which is probably one of the dullest thoroughfares I know but ye gods, it sounds romantic.

·         It also doubles as a Home of Rest for Garden Gnomes. There are loads of them crowding the verges and keeping each other company.

·         Each year it has a (literal) Christmas Grotto to rival anything the local mall can produce.   Which is as fine a marker of the changing season as my imagination can conjure.  One year someone will dump a real live Father Christmas and the dream will be complete.