Autumn has been and gone and we're now in the depths of winter, though we're still getting sunny spells, and the walled garden has beautiful pansies nodding their coloured faces in the gusty chill winds. We spent many hours on these benches in the summer but at the moment we tend to hurry past them on a powerwalk through the park so we stay warm!

We received a letter from the government this week informing us that our details were included on the two discs which were 'lost in the post' by the government's Revenue Department - us and 25 million other people who receive child benefit each month had our children's and our full names, dates of birth, address, National Insurance number (Medicare number), bank account number and sort code (BSB) saved onto these discs, ie enough information to potentially clone our identities. Brilliant. And this government wants to introduce identity cards and have declared they can keep our personal data safe. Not if this fiasco is anything to go by...