Another month where the weather was against me, making the paths locally too wet and muddy for enjoyable walks most days – but I did manage to make a break for it on a few occasions.

And on one very beautiful day mid-month a friend and I did a circular walk from Bridge via Bishopsbourne, followed by a special-treat lunch at The Pig, once a nightclub and now an upmarket hotel and restaurant.

The lawn put on a growth spurt after its end-of season-cut, then annoyingly became too wet to cut again. The roses thrived though – the photo (top) was taken on 17^th November, when I decided that I really must give them their final pruning.

On a visit to London I went to the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, which focused on the women behind the well-known artists: their models, muses, lovers and wives and – in some cases, artists themselves. Women such as the models Annie Miller (above) and Fanny Cornforth (below);

the artist Evelyn de Morgan (below) and (below right) portrait of her husband William de Morgan, the ceramicist;

shoes embroidered by the model Marie Spartali Stillman (below), and portraits of Jane Morris, artist’s model and later wife of William Morris and also a skilled needlewoman and designer (centre and right);

and a portrait of the Anglo-Saxon queen Elviga (below left) by the artist Joanna Boyce Wells, who also painted the beautiful portrait of the Jamaican model Fanny Eaton.

Family came to visit in late November and it was a great excuse to have food from the lovely Sumac Levantine cuisine foodvan – Sumac and pomegranate chicken, falafels, fattoush, beetroot salad, houmous and tahini. We ate it all up before I could take a picture! So here’s one of lovely Ellis instead, still the most delightful bookworm ever.