It’s cooler in London. We’ve had a tiny bit of rain, though not enough. Life is much more bearable.

On Thursday afternoon, I went to Tate Britain. I think it was a bit quieter than usual, probably because of the rail strikes. I saw the Walter Sickert exhibition (good, and interesting in that he’s someone I didn’t really know anything about), The Procession by Hew Locke (impresses with its scale and breadth of detail), and Cornelia Parker’s installations and smaller works (witty, imaginative, and inspiring). If you have the chance, go and see the Cornelia Parker exhibition before it closes on 16 October.

I made some kimchi from a huge white cabbage. Every previous time, I’ve used generic chilli pepper, but this time I made it with proper Korean chilli flakes, gochugaru. It makes a huge difference: even though it’s not the usual type of cabbage, just having the right chilli gives it that Korean flavour. It’s really good after five days of fermentation; it might get even better after longer, if I don’t eat it all first.

I cooked a very local crumble using blackberries from our garden (frozen last year) and apples from the neighbour’s tree that borders our garden. Even the (beet) sugar probably didn’t come very far.

I finally changed the last two light switches. When we moved in last year, I replaced all the single switches with big, easy to operate ones. It took me a bit longer to procure the double switch version, and they’ve been sitting around waiting to be installed for a while. It was a ten minute job in the end, but it took me months to get around to it.

I learned that those bits of metal that go at each end of a battery compartment – the metal tab and spring – are called battery shrapnel. They have other names, too, but that one is my favourite.