As the first winter frosts nip the air, there are still a few jobs to be done before putting the garden to bed

Not so slowly now, the remains of the last season are making their way back to earth. Cast your eye up and newly bare branches reveal the sky while, at our feet, the leaves are browning. These are the first few weeks of winter and I use my time carefully, letting the last of the autumn run its course and targeting energies to set things up for the months ahead.

Dr Martens boots were introduced to Britain in 1960. Sarfraz Manzoor looks back over a half-century on the fashion frontline

Dr Martens boots were first introduced into this country 50 years ago, a half-century that has seen Britain transformed, as musical movements have emerged and declined, and fashions come and gone. Yet DMs have been the footwear of choice for everyone from punks to policemen, skinheads to socialists.

What do our relationships with pets tell us about ourselves?

Cat people really are different from dog people, it turns out, according to a study that really was conducted and, presumably, really did receive some kind of funding. Specifically: dog people are more extrovert and agreeable; cat people are more neurotic, but also more open to new experiences. As a cat person, though currently petless, I accept that trade-off. To live with a cat is to invite challenge and growth; not for us those shaggy sycophants, paid for their flattery with Winalot. This is one of the more straightforward findings of "anthrozoology", the study of human-animal relations, but as the psychologist Hal Herzog makes clear in his brilliantly titled book Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat, that's about as straightforward as it gets. The overriding conclusion of anthrozoology, though usually expressed in more scholarly terms, is this: people are really weird about animals. "The only consistency in the way humans think about animals," he writes, quoting a colleague, "is inconsistency."

Painted or raw, exposed brick is the home accessory du jour – and if your house is pre-1950s, you've probably got some gems under that plaster

The latest Chanel ad to grace fashion bibles features this season's style must-have: not a shaggy, faux-fur yeti suit or an embroidered tweed jacket, but an exposed brick wall. It's there again in the Burberry ads, in shades of olive and purple, and even turns up in the Dior ad, this time as a brick floor.