I AM beginning to think that the Gods are smiling on us.

I mean, here we are, into November and, as yet, I haven’t had to wear a thicker cardigan, while the central heating is still in the off mode.

I’m just hoping that we don’t have to suffer for it early next year.

Today I have made the first of my New Year resolutions, I have decided that I will take up a new hobby — drawing and painting.

Well, to say it’s new is not strictly true, for in my youth I was at the Blackburn Tech, in the art department, which was on the top floor, so that we had the benefit of a studio which had very good lighting from the very large glass windows in the roof.

As payment, though, we had the hard work of climbing up all those stone steps to get up to those classrooms.

So, I have been up in the attic rooting amid all the junk ‘that might just come in useful one day’, to find my drawing board and easel.

So, you see, there are advantages to being one of those people that just can’t bear to throw anything away.

Now having brushed off all of the cobwebs and given it a cursory wash, hey presto! I am already to go.

I have been over to Preston station to pick up Bill, who has been to ‘down south’ to watch a big rugby match, and I was quite amazed to see the volume of people waiting for trains — it was if everyone had decided to go away at the same time.

It reminded me of the stations when I was young and we had Wakes weeks; then the trains going to Blackpool from Feniscowles were full of people, mainly neighbours all going away, to the same place, to be with the same people at the same time — but it seems they liked it that way.

In the evenings my dad, funnily enough, went for a pint with the same blokes that he went for a drink with at home.