Back in October I sketched this view of the Arboretum (which is where that big old Japanese Zelkova tree used to stand before it started splitting in two, and was eventually removed; I drew that too). Back in October it was starting to turn autumnal; that red and green tree was still yellow, that orange tree and yellow tree were still green. At the start of this month I sketched it again to show the colourful changes. Of course none of this makes sense if you are watching this in black and white, like the BBC audience on Boxing Day in 1967 attempting to make sense of Magical Mystery Tour. In the past couple of days we have had a lot of rain and a bit of wind, and it probably looks a bit less leafy now, I should go and check. December is moving along fast, we keep opening those windows on the advent calendars, the Christmas chocolate actually keeps multiplying despite my best efforts to eliminate the threat by eating it all, and I am halfway through my six mince pies. We haven’t started on the panettone yet. 2023 is wrapping up its presence, 2024 is on the horizon and I’m not looking forward to that. I have a bad feeling about it. I think we should just skip 2024 and maybe 2025 too, and go right on to 2026 and watch the World Cup. Enough of that sense of foreboding, I’ll just keep on recording the changing of the seasons in the sketchbook, and try to keep a little optimism. The Stillman and Birn Alpha sketchbook itself is nearly over, just a couple of pages left, which I will complete by Christmas, or Boxing Day maybe, which they don’t even have over here. Getting to the end of a sketchbook is a great motivator to keep on drawing. I have done a lot more urban sketching this year than usual, way more than in 2022, and I can’t imagine 2024 will have as much but we will see. The Urban Sketching Symposium is in Argentina in 2024, but I won’t go because it’s in October, no good for me. I’m going to organize more sketchcrawls. Explore more. Take more sketching risks. Or not worry and keep drawing.