I promised my mother that I would help her move some stuff around her attic this weekend, and it seemed like a sensible time to also empty out my storage container in Banbury, where two trunks of books have been languishing since we sold the family home in the summer of 2011.

So I belted up the M40 to Oxfordshire on Saturday morning, P Bad in tow, to meet my mother at Storagebase, before a gentle detour via The Red Lion in Culworth, so I could buy her lunch as a thank you. (Wonderful buttery grilled sole and new potatoes for her, courgette fritters for me.)

The rest of the weekend has been divided between a serious attic foraging session on my mother’s behalf, the editing of thousands of LLG photos in front of the TV last night, lots of cooking and recipe testing and writing, and a lovely walk down the lane with P Bad and Billy the Whippet in the weak April sunshine. (The warmest day so far this year.)