I've been travelling, checking up on home, catching up with family, friends, flatmates and the foremost points of interest in current British Culture (i.e., the Tate Crack and recent episodes of Heroes), and pretty much lost my regular connection to the WWW.

I did however work, and I am very close to completing a step-outline of the script. I'm 30 days behind schedule, and trying not to let that worry me - the structure of the last act took much more sorting out than I had anticipated. I hope the northern breezes blowing through my skull have sharpened the brain rather than addled it, (they do make my fingers a little stiff in the morning, so spelling can be a little eccentric) and that I have a suitable structure to start hanging a film on.

I've come back to the cottage to find that winter has descended from the fell. It was blowing in when I left, stripping the last leaves from the sessile oaks, and tossing the crows about the sky.

Now we have had the whole range of winter weather - including snow, which I missed by 90 mins. My train pulled into Hexham station just as the last traces melted away, leaving only salt.

The colours have all changed - all the yellow is leached out of the grass, leaving that wonderful blue-grey they call "wintergreen", and has fled upwards to the fell where the bracken is the colour of ginger biscuits or a new welcome mat.

It's still wriggling with life - two days ago I saw a weasel, bright red, leaping from the water trough to the old tank and back into the rushes. Adders have been seen (not alas by me) sunning themselves on the walls. My missing frogs turned up in the scrub around the burn, big and fat and old and wary.

Last night was full moon and frost - I could see from one side of the valley to the other, and all of it sparkling.

But inside I am warm enough, and dry enough. I have cracked to the extent that I am lighting two portable LPG heaters - one in the bedroom for 15 minutes before I slip under the quilt, one downstairs first thing in the morning, and on very cold nights after 9pm.

And I have water, blessed running water, thanks to a swift decision by my landlord. The contractor brought a mini digger up to the fell, and for two days this week two men worked in the pouring rain to capture the original spring (using a box, pea- shingle and masses of the sticky impervious bright yellow native clay), dig in a new settling tank 100 yards above me, and run a new pipe down.

seconds after the connected the new pipe to the original, water gushed at at least one bar pressure from the old brass kitchen tap, bringing with it all the peat that had clogged the older one solid. After two minutes of high velocity black mud I had clear water. No more wading through the mud to collect from a stream.

I'm looking out now for a replacement for the 19th C sink, which disappeared some time ago - a shallow stoneware slopstone, wide and shallow enough to stand pans and jugs, wash and prep veg, gut fish etc.

Now that I know that there are weasels in the wild wood, and that I am constant enough to stick out the cold weather, I finally feel more like tough wise old Badger, and less like eccentric fly-by-night enthusiast Mr Toad.