Job: 11th to 14th September. North Pennines, Cumbria.

There’s nothing like my job for noting every joyful little change of the season. I feel like a cog in a system of wheels. A cog who gladly grabs what’s on offer from outdoor wheels and flicks it onto the plates of inside wheels. It wasn’t long ago I was churning out still-summery puds. In just a couple of weeks all has changed. It’s autumn. 

This week there’s a party for the grouse shooting. We’re high-up on the fells and on the menu is hearty fare: loin of venison with homemade rowan jelly followed by Grand Marnier soufflés. Proper traditional grouse with the obligatory bread sauce, fried breadcrumbs, game chips and Cumberland sauce. For pud: blackberry fool atop little wobbling blackberry gin jellies. One lunchtime I made a Claire MacDonald prawn and egg mousse. Downton-Abbey-Style. Sounds odd maybe, to current taste, but it’s super tasty and beautiful to look at. Turned-out of a high-rise mould, it was pale pink and shivered like a tremoring Edwardian gentle-lady. It wibbled on a plate on the lovely housekeeper’s lap, in a Landrover up a bumpy track all the way to the lunch hut nestled atop the fells. It sat, rather naked and embarrassed looking, on a rustic trestle table comforted by a roaring open fire. Then the big Gun’s arrived and ate it. With aplomb.

A repeat episode of that series (or Downton Shabby as it's now known) was on in the kitchen when one of the Guns put his head round the door and asked if he could sit and watch it with me. We chuckle at what Mr Carson would think; me with my apron and he in his tweeds, cashmere shooting socks resting on the table. At ease. Altogether more downstairs than upstairs. Bungalow, in fact.

"Thank you for all you did for us at G. The left overs we found were delicious and everyone on the ground here said you really looked after everyone to perfection." C Townshend