Frost

Two nights ago we had our first frost. A thin, cold start to the day, the air dank and cold, as if it had been stored or came from under the sea; bunker air. There was a heavy dew and the grass in the garden was lank and heavy, the beech leaves glistening. (At night in the kitchen light they seem to glow expectantly, like anxious jewels; a trick of the light, warming the colour.) Driving to Hereford the mist in the valleys was layered, shifting, the hills clear and black above it, as if floating. The harvest is mostly in - we see tractor-loads of apples and potatoes on the roads - and the fields were bare and tawny, soft chocolate or a ruddy brown. There was not a breath of wind and the trees were motionless in the light mist. The hedgerows look mottled, green leaves and brown stems after hedge-trimming. The sun struggled to get through but lit distant hillsides softly, a hazy light, like looking back in time.

It has been a good autumn so far for leaf colour; the maples in the car park, our beech tree, and everywhere there seem to be huge crimson splashes of Russian vine - or Virginia creeper or Boston vine, I never know - and the chestnuts and beech trees generally are spectacular.

We walked in to the city centre over the Wye footbridge. The river had risen about eight feet and was a surging tide of coffee-coloured water, carrying large branches, a real flood water, moody and dangerous. It had burst its banks and partly flooded the Bishop's Meadow park.

I found an unexpected heart to the fields' colours in the Cathedral. I love the fat Romanesque columns and pale red sandstone, but on this visit I noticed a deeper, darker light - ambience - in the choir stalls, which were lit but inaccessible. The dark wood seemed to glow with a ruby light, a polish, and set off by the gold detail and suspended crown-of-thorns sculpture they seemed the warm heart of the county, connected somehow - by colour or mood or just journey - to a bleak agricultural landscape.