I like the smells and texture of November. Helen shared her view of the underrated month as walked under a clear starlit night. At last the temperature had dropped after a fortnight or so of rain and fog. Underfoot the going was soft, the mud a slippery plastic. There was no wind and the Field Maples has dropped their first batch of rich yellow leaves. The Red Oaks along the old railway line had succumbed at once and a rich bronze leaf carpet lay along the floor if the cutting. Every footprint yielded the sharp scent of denying leaves. It is the sort of scent that evokes memories of long past autumns; the pure pleasure of kicking through wind-raked piles of fallen leaves.

Further along the sharp stink of a Fox hung in the air, so acrid and fresh that we must have disturbed him on his rounds. The dogs pressed forward along the trail of some invisible creature. All three converge on a gateway in Back Lane in an ecstasy of a find. They strain at the leash as something noisily jumps from the lee of the hedge and flees to the centre of the field. The Fox, we think, until we look across from descending road through the next hedge gap. The unmistakeable shape of a Roebuck is just silhouetted against the sky line – he watches us from a safe distance and visibly relaxes as we walk down the lane and away.

Overhead, to the east, the star Aldebaran glows orange on the tip of one of the horns of Taurus.