It has been a long time since I last posted. So I'll just give a short update on some of the things which have happened over the last 3 1/2 months. Helpfully arranged in bullet point form for ease of reference.

• Marta (a student from Poland) comes to stay with us for a few months
  
• Finished 2 years of A-Levels in Spanish and German
• Applied to university
  
• Went to Turkey—country number 51...
• Got accepted into Wolverhampton and Manchester universities—chose Manchester
• Went to Germany to redecorate a friend's flat (we were invited)
• Came back to a pile of important documents for uni, which should have been completed and sent back during the last week
• Filed out the documents and sent them off
• Went to uni (no one else had completed the documents)
• Marta leaves
  
• Wrote a blog about the last 3 1/2 months

So there you have it, you didn't miss too much. For three out of the next four years I'll be travelling to Manchester most mornings. My studies are going well so far, it's good to have the time to study without having a day job too. We've also started to clear the allotment for digging and planting in the spring. I'm in charge of the fruit section of the allotment, so I spent today with Jonathan, who has joined us along with Joanne his wife, cutting down a largeish tree which was blocking the light and taking up space needed for more fruit trees. We've done pretty well with all of the produce from this year, we still have some things growing but so far we've harvested about 50 tomatoes, 20 large courgettes, 8 pumpkins, a few bucketfulls of beans, 10 kohlrabi, 5 heads of corn, a few kilos of raspberries, about three bucketfulls of potatoes, a small bag of blackcurrants etc. Next year we're going to try to expand our variety and also grow more of the main crops, as we now have three allotments rather than just one. We inherited a large greenhouse complex with the third allotment, which takes up about a third of the total space. It does leave us with plenty of opportunities of growing things in cooler weather, as the summers are shorter here in the north.

I'm sure Monika will want to add something to this soon, but I'll leave it to her to write from her own perspective.