It seems that the universe wants Stephen to have some spending money.

The night before last he ran to the corner store to get some gum, and the owner of the store, unprompted, offered him a paper round. He started this morning, and it seems to have gone quite well. It seems to takes around 45 minutes, and he starts at 7-ish, so he doesn't have to get up particularly early and he also has time for a decent breakfast before he has to leave for school at 8.35. He's pretty happy; while this job doesn't pay as well as the last one did, there's no blood involved.

I think he may find it hard to get up some mornings, though, especially as we start to move further into winter and it gets colder and darker and rainier. Every day the sun rises later and sets earlier, and every day more leaves fall from our trees. When we first moved in here, if you looked out of the big sliding door in our living room you saw a solid wall of green at the bottom of the garden. Now so many leaves have fallen that we can see the neighbours' house.