Welcome to "Man with two dogs" - the family website for dog owners and dog walkers.

THERE'S NO denying now that winter's on its way. We've woken up to the first morning with frost on the cars and having to run them for some minutes to let the heaters clear the windows.

LAST SATURDAY the Doyenne and I fairly supped up the culture. In the afternoon we were at House of Dun, run now by the National Trust for Scotland, to listen to a programme entitled Violet Jacob's Voices of Angus. Regular readers will know that Violet Jacob, one of the last of the family of the Erskines of Dun, is a great literary heroine of mine.

 THE GOLDEN evening brightens in the west' (as the hymnist wrote), sums up several glorious sunsets that the dogs and I enjoyed at the start of the week. I'm no artist, as my predecessor Colin Gibson was, and I never seem to have the camera with me to record the natural beauty that floods the skies.

  DOGS, DOYENNE and I are all back from an autumn break on the west coast. We chose the dreadful week, weatherwise, that affected pretty well the whole of Scotland. That said, although it rained stair rods much of the time, we didn't have the terrific winds that affected this part of the country, with fallen trees and other damage.