Christmas Eve

I've been listening to the Nine Lessons and Carols. Now isn't that a strange thing for an atheist to do? But I have a fondness for that service, you see, when I was twelve, I was chosen to read the first lesson; the service was held in St Mary's church in Warwick, which is a pretty big church, it was the pro-cathedral for Coventry until that cathedral was re-built. I don't remember being nervous, but I had been well drilled anyway. However, there was one unplanned result, apparently it was all rather eerie, why? I was small for my age, as a matter of fact so small that no one could see me behind the large brass eagles of the lectern, so the whole reading came from a disembodied voice. Fortunately I didn't know it at the time, or it might well have put me off. Of course in those days there were no microphones so no doubt I was chosen because I had the loudest voice!
I wish they'd stick with the traditional service though, I hate all the trendy bits they put in.

Saturday

I've done two small pieces of Christmas food shopping and despaired at all the over priced rubbish in the shops. Sainsbury's in this case. Llion and I have, I think, joined the 'Bah Humbug' brigade. When I asked him what he wanted for Christmas lunch, after offering him all the usual things he decided he'd like Spicey Pork! Now I'm trying to think of a starter, but as he doesn't eat fish all the smoked salmon or prawn or what have you, aren't an option. And as he doesn't like Christmas pudding either he wants my chestnut mousse, hope I can remember how to make it, though actually I do like it too.
That reminds me of a few Christmasses ago when we were having lunch with a group of friends and I was asked to provide the dish for a Vegan. Horror of horrors; but I did come up with a sort of nut roast thing bound together with Tahini, encased in dried aubergine slices with a centre stuffing of chestnuts and cranberries. And, would you believe, he didn't turn up! We dished it up as a second stuffing and everyone, even me, enjoyed it.
I expect you are all working hard at your portfolios, which is really an excuse to boast that I've done all mine bar a little editing and the critical essay.
Hope you all survive the festive season unscathed. It's the time of the year when I am especially glad my, admittedly minimal family, live a good way away.

Monday

It's now almost mid-day, and I've spent (wasted) all morning fiddling around with photos for one of my pieces for my portfolio. It has pictures of four authors, and I suddenly thought I really should acknowledge their source in my bibliography. Of the four I could only remember where I had found two of them, so those two were easy, but - they were colour while the other three were black and white. So I decided it would be better to have them all in monotone. That was easy enough, I quickly found suitable photos and went through the copying, cutting and pasting into the article. The other three I couldn't remember which bit of the web I'd got them from so I spent another while searching for them again. I did find them all in the end, but I also found other photos I preferred so - copying, cutting and pasting again. Then up dating the Bibliography.
I don't know how you who are working manage, well I do, I would just have had to be more efficient than I am now! I think I was when I was working, and of course when it was for work, I always had a secretary to do the leg work for me, though I often did it myself, it took as long to explain what I wanted as to do it anyway.

Saturday

Isn't it cold? I have the misfortune or the inefficiency in living in the coldest room in the house; I have a kitchen with a Rayburn so that is warm, the bathroom, which is beyond the kitchen, is the warmest room in the house. The other room has a wood burning stove, and I live in the room in between which has some fairly inefficient central heating. Unfortunately, the heat from the Rayburn doesn't penetrate to the living room, they are divided by a wall that is four feet thick with a doorless doorway/corridor between. The Kitchen, Utility and bathroom used to be the shippon, and that wall the end wall of the house. The main reason it's cold is that we have slate floors which are laid directly on the earth, so they are always cold. When we had the house extended into the shippon we did consider having the house slates lifted and some insulation put under them but quite apart from the cost the slates are very big mostly 6x3 feet, and therefore very heavy. The builders said they couldn't take them up without breaking them, they are very snugly butted together. At the time I could bring myself to have that done. Now, on cold days anyway, I almost regret that decision.
I am fascinated by the way people built these houses. As I think I've told you before I'm well off the road and how they actually got huge slates like these up to the house defies belief. When we had the alterations done we used the slate dividers from the shippon to make the additional flooring, and I know the builders had considerable trouble moving them. They did put insulations under those which adds to that room being warm.
Actually, with the exception of one wall in the middle of the house all the walls are two moderately good stone outers filled up with rubble, it only stands up by the sheer weight. As I said one end wall is a good 4 feet, the other end the same and the front and back walls about 2 and a half feet. If you want to put in a new pipe you just make a hole in the plaster then wriggle the pipe through till it comes out the other side!

Friday

I have almost finished writing my cards and the majority can be posted tomorrow. Years ago, when I was young and eager, I would start buying cards in August and choose each one specifically for the recipient, this year I bought some job lots that I didn't even like much. What it is to become old and cynical!
Actually I'm not sure it is that. I come from a religious family but have been a devout atheist for many years. If I were to be truly honest I would send out cards for December 21st, the shortest day, always a day I mark off in my mind, and it was of course a celebration long before Christmas was.
Perhaps I'll do that next year, design and print cards especially, what do you think?

Thursday

I too managed to lose my way into my blog, but I've found it again so I can go on boring you.

Monday

As it's Monday and I have a few things I should do before tomorrow's class I thought I would share with you one of my favourite recipes, cooked it last night and it was super. For those who are not carnivores like me it can be cooked with any meat, Quorn (just for you Brenda if you ever read this), fish or vegetables, I suppose. Not for you just yet Lee!

SPICEY PORK

A little time to prepare but quick to cook therefore ideal if you are entertaining

If pork, well marbled, boneless shoulder chops, but chicken, quorn etc. does equally well if you want to reduce the fat content.

Ingredients

Pork, ‘chop’ size per person or any other meat

Marinade

2 tbls Soy sauce
1tbls Rice vinegar or dry sherry
1 tbls Sesame oil
1 egg
1 dsst spoon corn flour
Chopped garlic to taste
Chopped ginger to taste

Sauce

2 tbls Soy sauce
1 tbls Rice vinegar or dry sherry
1 tbls Sesame oil
Chopped garlic to taste
Chopped ginger to taste
6 tbls Tomato ketchup
1 tbls Worcester sauce
(Sweet chilli sauce optional)

Preparation

Slice meat thinly on the diagonal, long thin pieces
Stir well into Marinade, leave to stand for 20 minutes to 24 hours as convenient
Stir sauce and leave sauce to stand as well

To cook

Heat a little oil in a frying pan or wok, I use a mixture of Olive and Sesame oil
Add well stirred meat, a little at a time, till it is all well browned.
Add sauce, stir in, heat till bubbling and slightly reduced

Serve with noodles or rice.

(Great accuracy isn’t required, adjust flavours to suit taste.)

I should acknowledge the source, Yan Can Cook - American cookery programme

Try it and enjoy!

Friday

We are now coming to the part of the year I like the best - when it's not raining anyway. I like to see the true shapes of trees uncluttered by leaves, except the odd conifers, and I have a pair of Eucalyptuses. I don't mind leaves in the spring when they are new and fresh but I very rapidly tire of them and look forward to bare trees again; quite apart from the leaves blocking my water channels!

Gardening tip: Not that I'm any great shakes as a gardener, I'm good at cuttings but not at then planting them out, quite apart from my battle with rabbits who eat anything they can.

Outside your kitchen window plant a Viburnum Bodnantense Dawn. The leaves aren't anything special, but it starts flowering now; round bunches of pink tubular flowers and flowers all winter on bare branches. It also flowers off and on through the rest if the year which makes it a pain to know when to prune it. It's not that long lived, but if you prune out one in three branches every year you can keep it going. It smalls nice too.

If you have the room plant a Prunus subhirtella autumnalis rosea. Winter flowering cherry, small pale pink flowers, again on bare branches, and it will flower all winter, mine is just getting going.

Thursday

Much as I agree with Phil's Bah! Humbug attitude...











This was my last years Christmas card, would you believe the view from my front door (strange the obsessions some people have) 08.10, 30/11/06.

Wednesday

To-day I haven't opened my briefcase, well, not yet anyway. Before I'd finished my breakfast my son found he had no brakes on his car - so I had to leap into my clothes, leave my coffee, bundle the dog in the back, follow him down the track; he just about managed to stop at the bottom, then take him to our local Landrover garage, very helpful, to make arrangements for them to look at/collect it; then take him to work. At least that gave me the opportunity for me to buy a paper to read over my belated, reheated coffee. When I got home that was. I have a ford across my track, and of course it was clogged up with leaves and overflowing. Fortunately I had my trusty ditching spade in the car, so I was able to sort that out on the way home.
This afternoon I have been out again opening one of the streams by the house - there are times when I wonder why I live here!
Now I've read the e-mails from Alison and Sian, edited my analysis and am bracing myself to do the hoovering before I have to collect Llion again. I keep hoping that my neighbour will take his sheep home, it's so much easier when you don't have to open and close two gates, especially when it is pouring with rain and blowing a gale as it was last night.

Monday

So what have I been doing since last Thursday? Not a lot really. Having filleted the travel writing piece from something I wrote several years ago (and that Rob thoroughly lambasted), I went back and re-edited the piece, moved the pictures round etc. Actually I don't really mind whether anyone liked it or not - it is a recollection of a couple of months of my life in 1960, a long time ago now! I've also spent, or wasted, quite a bit of time doing searches on the net about Matatiele, Oribi Gorge etc. and very illuminating they were too.
Of course back in the '60s apartheid was in full flow. The population of Matatiele was about 250 white people with a further scattering in the surrounding farms, Cedarville, eight miles away, somewhat smaller. The Bantu, as the Africans were called, were mostly in reservations out side and between the two towns. In total some 4,000 people. Very few of them were allowed to live within the town boundaries, and they were subject to the pass laws, which included always carrying their passes with them and a night time curfew. I regularly signed passes for them to go out in the evening.
One was very aware that if there was an uprising the populations of little towns like these could have been wiped out over night. I don't know how much bad feeling there was under the surface but all my experience of the natives were friendly, they were, are, charming and cheerful people. However, the set up then was such that one never met the natives in a social situation, they were always servants, or workers of some kind or another. It is fascinating, to me anyway, to see that the Municipal Council of Matatiele is now predominantly native, with only three white people among the thirty or so counsellors. One knows that South Africa has tremendous problems still but to me it is a miracle that the hand over to African rule happened without the bloodshed that might have been expected.
Oribi Gorge too has changed tremendously, it is now a venue for extreme sports! Look at the website and you will see similar pictures to mine but now with bungee jumps and white water rafting etc. added.
It is one of the great sadnesses of my life that I didn't stay in South Africa. Why didn't I? I was brought up not to be colour prejudiced, and I knew that sooner or later I would come into conflict with the powers that be and I'm too idle or non-political to take on that kind of challenge, as well as which my father had died whilst I was there, I came home for a few weeks and then went back. Being from a family with a dearth of relatives and my brother being a missionary in West Africa, I did feel I should come back as my mother would have been without any relatives in England.
Enough of the past. Mind you the weather has been such that going out has not been that attractive an option - though I did brave the rain and wind to clear my various drainage channels, and I must do that again to-day after the very heavy rain last night. At this time of year, it is a bit like the forth bridge, as soon as I've cleared one build up of leaves I have to start over again; when I was working it was always my Sunday afternoon job, now it's whenever I realize I can't go out without my wellies on.

Thursday

Well, I've done my homework and sent it off.
I have to say that travel writing is the very least of my interests, I don't think I have ever read a travel book - I lie, I have read one but that was because I was interested in the author not in the subject, so I fully expect you all to be as bored with my effort as I will be with yours!
It's now mid-day so it's time to get dressed and go and get the paper. My dog thinks so anyway.

Saturday

To-day I am going to have a cold evening, all my own fault of course. I have a solid fuel Rayburn which needs cleaning out a couple of times a year, and I always intend to do it before it gets really cold and never do. It takes about 48 hours to cool enough to Hoover it out so I didn't make it up yesterday and said to Llion not to make it up; but as usual he wasn't listening and half made it up before I stopped him, result? Instead of cleaning it out this morning and having it going again by lunchtime now I can't do it till to-morrow. As a result, I've got my electric fire fire on and I've lit my other wood burning stove, in the room we only use for storage. Then again I intend to light that fire at least once a week all year and more often in winter to keep the rest of the house warm. I've plenty of wood so that isn't a problem but when the fire hasn't been lit for some months it's a bit reluctant and smokey; the fact that that's my fault too is no comfort. Oh the joys of living out in the wilds.
This morning was the day when the men come to shoot foxes. I don't have shooting rights for my land, so I don't have any control of it. I'm somewhat ambivalent about shooting foxes but my surrounding farmers are all in favour, even if I do rather like seeing them around. However, it does irritate me that I never know in advance when they are coming, usually once in spring and once in autumn, to know to keep Sandy in. The first we hear of them are yowling dogs, men shouting or shots, a little unnerving! I'm not sure how Sandy would react to a pack of about a dozen large mixed breed hounds, or how they'd react to him. I expect he'd be very excited and then terrified out of his wits. This morning one of the men drove up and blocked the track to stop the sheep getting out, but, of course also blocking us in. Llion was agitating as he'd arranged to go out, so we went down in a convoy. A chap with the big four-by-four could have driven up and into the field but chose to back down, the best part of 300 yards, narrow, winding and steep. I hate doing it and if Llion and I ever meet, if necessary, we change cars, so I'm going forwards as he's able to drive backwards as well as he is forwards. This poor chap was nearly as bad as I am and made rather a meal of it. I could feel Llion sighing in disbelief in the car behind me.
Anyway, I stopped to speak to him said sorry for putting him through that but asked his to give a message to the man with the shooting rights, he wasn't out with the guns, that I would appreciate a phone call to warn me and will he tell the men not to block my track. If I ever have the money, the lottery perhaps, I'll have my track redone and add at least one passing place.

Wednesday

I went through my notes from yesterday this morning and decided I needed to find a book for a reference. Dear Dodie, a biography of Dodie Smith, 101 Dalmatians and all that. That was the end of my productive day - I couldn't find it! I know precisely what it looks like, I know I haven't lent it to anyone but could I find it? No.
I know my house is messy, over flowing with my books and Llion's computers, but I have been round and round my seven bookcases, even using a torch in the darkest corners all to no avail.
I don't actually need it, not at this precise moment anyway, but you know how it is - I won't be able to rest till I track it down. I'm now trying to persuade myself I'm more likely to find it if I do some long-overdue house work and tidying, but I'm afraid I'm losing that battle too.

Monday

To-day is really a Monday day. The fog has cleared a little, but it's still pretty cold; (I've found in the past that up my hill can be 9 or so degrees colder than in Bangor), at least we didn't have snow. In a way I'm quite envious of you who are at work, once one got to work, though that wasn't necessarily easy, what the weather was doing outside didn't really matter. On a day like this one doesn't really want to go out, but my dog does want to, so I'll have to brace myself, I need to take the rubbish to the tip anyway.
I am told that there is a rubbish collection here on Tuesdays, but in thirty years I've never seen a collection lorry/van, I do wonder if it does really exist. In my case I would have to take my rubbish down to the road anyway so why not take it all the way to Denbigh? But I never mention at the tip that I actually live in Conway, I'd have to take it to Mochdre if I did! I couldn't really claim that my rubbish came from my Denbighshire field, there isn't a house there.
It does, from time to time, cause problems that I have a field in Denbighshire and the address is Denbigh, but the rest, including the house, is in Conway. The Conway/Denbigh border is a tiny stream arising on my land all of a couple of inches wide.

Sunday

Have you noticed a strange thing? Now we've had our second lesson with Pat our blogging has reduced considerably?
Not that I've anything particular to report from the last few days. Brenda and I had lunch together on Friday, the Manor House in Ruthin. Very nice but a bit pricey for every day as well as which the portions are a bit modest, we made up for that by having a robust pudding to follow our small but delicious first courses.

Wednesday

This is the book I mentioned last night
It is a bit expensive £12.99 but well worth it. There is a wealth of interesting, useful and sometimes obscure information.

One would think that this is a very lazy way to make a blog entry, but as usual I go all round the houses, losing pictures between my scanner and posting them. I really should write myself an instruction!

Monday

If you read the 'Books' part of the Sunday Times ignore the rest of this paragraph.
'As clever as a bag of ferrets and as trivial as a perch of canaries.' Who about whom? Virginia Woolf about Noel Coward, 1920's. I always wish I had the knack of memorable insults.
See you all to-morrow.

Sunday

Spent all morning on an idea for the portfolio. A leaflet about my early life - I'll have to leave it to stew for a bit and see if will really fit in.
Alison, I can open alifrog but not kermitfrog, I can't see why you can't get in to it. Hope you read this, kermitfrog doesn't seem to be available and if I leave a message on alifrog you won't be able to see it anyway.
I think we're just fortunate, we've been with the same dental practice for 30 years, I'm a hybrid, NHS for most things and the odd Private if it's purely cosmetic!

Thursday

Spent the morning editing and retyping my article about Jeremy Yates, then wasted hours inserting photos of his pictures. There are so many ways of doing it but I do it so rarely I have to relearn every time. Then I messed about trying to arrange my text round it with pretty indifferent results. I really should get a Desk Top Publishing programme, but then again I expect whoever publishes it (if one's ever that fortunate) would do all that anyway, wouldn't they? Phil? Anita?
This afternoon I had a tooth crowned, quick and painless so now I have a shining silver tooth to make up my full complement.
Incidentally, do you know that one NHS crown costs £177, but for the same price you can have any number of crowns, shame that I only needed one! The same goes for the simple £37 treatment, it's the same price whether it's one filling or dozens. The logic of this escapes me as the Dentist gets the same payment however much work he does, but it does make one understand why dentists are unwilling to take on new NHS patients.

Wednesday

As we have so much homework I thought I'd just treat you to a picture of my silly dog. Name Lysander, Sandy for every day.

Tuesday

Wha-hee!! The Asda paper works - so ignore my pleas for vigilance.
Finished my homework - but to what quality is another matter.

Monday

Wasted most of the day looking for 70grm printer paper. Usually Tesco has it but they're into Christmas stuff now so anything useful has disappeared. Staples don't stock anything so down market. Eventually I got some cheap bog standard paper in Asda, it isn't labelled with a weight but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
So why am I after this rare commodity? I have two printers, an all-in-one which is useful for scanning and copying and doing colour stuff, but the cartridges are as dear as a printer; this one will use any paper at all. The second is an elderly HP Laser printer which is great for doing large amounts in black and white. Llion bought it for £10 at a car boot sale, put in a new toner and it's fine, cheap to run and produces very nice copy, but it objects to being fed with anything but 70grm paper.
So if any of you know of a source let me know, if you see any buy it! And I'll pay you for it.
I suppose I could buy it on the internet, but think of the postage!

Sunday

Saturday passed with little of note. Llion, my son, recovering from doing his IBM course in London and therefore only wanting to flop about. Dreadful misty wettish day anyway. I tried to make a start on my analysis and am struggling! It would help if I understood anything about English grammar, I wouldn't recognise an adjectival clause if it ran over me. I've decided not to analyse the prose presented in class but to start on the one I intend to put in my portfolio. Not what was asked for but why do some thing twice when once will do?
Continued with my analysis this morning, Llion took the daft dog out for a walk, so he was happy.
Which he? Both.
This afternoon we went to see Llion's friend Sam's new house. So far it is only the foundations and the wooden frame which was put up yesterday, and was completed within the day. Mind you it is quite a small house. Llion feels some kind of ownership as he leant his Discovery to Sam to collect all the wood. It's going to be fun watching it progress. Sam works with his father making kitchens, so he's building this house just above his parent's home for him and his wife and baby.
Having now read the paper I may well have another go at this Analysis, and I still haven't done a plan for an article about Creative Writing classes. Still the are quite a few hours before Tuesday evening.

Yesterday almost reverted to average boredom - but not quite. I went and bought the posts my neighbour needs, all £3.70 of them, again the agricultural supplier requires quite a bit of extraneous chat. Get the poles loaded in my car, they have to go in the back seat and poking through to the front. I have an estate car but as my dog's cage takes up the whole of the boot everything else has to go in the back. Decided it would be wise to deliver them to my neighbour first, rather than go to Prestatyn with them on board. It's odd but in the thirty years I've lived here this is only the second time I've been down to his house. His track is mostly tarmacked but the last bit is two hairpins and a plank bridge over the little river. He is almost as far below the road as I am above and I am fascinated by the view from his yard as it is the same but totally different from this perspective. It gives me a chance to look at my 6 acres of conifers and see how they are growing, which you can't really do as you drive alongside them.
In my post I've received a book which will be an integral part of my portfolio. You may remember that Liz mentioned my passion for Christopher Isherwood and he is going to be half of my theme. A book of his lectures when he was teaching in California about writing was due to be published last July. I thought a review of this book could be one of my offerings. However, I have been having messages from time to time from Amazon about delays in publication and I was beginning to get anxious about it. I consulted American Amazon and found that it was now due to be published on the 28th December in America. I was calculating whether I would get it in time for 18th January when I received an e-mail from English Amazon that it wasn't going to be available here till March. Doom and Gloom. But while trolling through the American site I found mention of a book about CI I hadn't heard of before. A book of previously unpublished letters to his mother 1935 - 1940 (published 2005). I got a used copy and am well over half way through it and it will fit my purpose even if it is a bit specialist. It's fascinating reading the actual letters when I know of the events from his own recollection and those of his biographers.
To revert to the place I live I am adding a piece I wrote a couple of years ago about my track and my post:

Leaving Home

As I sat reading my post I smiled to myself and envied no one else in the world. Had I won the lottery, been appointed to a top job or received a proposal from an eligible man? No, I had just driven down my track from the house to the by-road leading to the road.
A pleasant grey day, not cold, after all it was the first week in July. As I backed out of the gate then closed it against marauding sheep, I looked across my overgrown garden resolving that to-morrow I must get out the strimmer, billhook and hedge trimmer. To-day I would just admire the peonies, fuchsias, escallonias and beyond them the passionflowers and honeysuckle once again swathing the outhouse with greeny-purple new growth and creamy yellow flowers.

As I headed downhill I caught a flash of ginger brown and there was a young fox disturbed as it drank at the spring. In a flash it had jumped back turned a few steps down the track and the scrambled up the bank into the field then through the fence to disappear into the bracken beyond.

Below the first gate the bracken and ferns had now unfurled from their early curled spikes and were forming bright green sentinels on either side. There were brambles poking new shoots into the open space above the track, another job for the trimmer.

As I dropped down toward the copse round the old quarry I slowed down as an old ewe and her lamb hesitated on the track, I didn’t want them to run all the way down to the road. With good sense, so rare in sheep, the ewe turned up the bank into the trees with her lamb bundling after her. As I drew alongside the copse a pigeon clattered out of the trees in alarm and a buzzard slid into view above. The pigeon jinked back into the trees as the buzzard sailed on.

At the bottom corner I drew to a halt and collected my post from the post box. It easier for the postman having the box beside the road. He used to be able to drive up to it and put the post in before backing down again. However, one of them, known to drive our country roads like a maniac, managed to demolish the post that held the box. My kindly neighbour straightened the box and fixed it to a young sycamore tree. The fact that the postman now has to get out of his van to deliver my post causes me no grief at all.

Before driving on I sit and go through the post and read anything interesting there and then. How dull it would be to have post plop on to the door mat or to drive straight on to some suburban road outside my front door.

This is the view from my front door. It's been too good a year for tree growth so you can't actually see my track.
The reason for the picture? To-day has not been as boring as I expected; as you can see my house is quite remote, a third of a mile of steep, rocky and in places wet track to get to it. It is not visible from the road nor are any houses visible from my front door. The result is that visitors are few and far between.
I have also to tell you of a peculiarity of mine I have not been able to overcome: I am incapable of getting dressed unless I am going out. This didn't really matter when I was working, I had to get dressed because I was going out. Now I'm retired I tend to do things like sorting out my notes, playing with my blog in my, fortunately, new, purple, respectable dressing gown.
So there I was when my daft dog shot out of the house barking. It was my next door (almost) neighbour who grazes my land for part of the year and does things like mend my fences in payment. Of course being a Welsh farmer the fact that he wanted me to get some (?) sprags, the diagonal posts that support the straining posts, was not arrived at for half an hour or so. I long ago found that to ask a farmer what he wanted was seen as the height of bad manners, so we discussed the weather, his sheep, my dog, his dog, the neighbours, the course I was doing at Bangor, how is youngest daughter is getting on at Cardiff University etc. We eventually get to the fence posts and then on to how he's getting to the said fence. It's far too steep to get to from either his or my land, so he has to load the necessary equipment on his tractor and set off around the mountain, about a mile and a half by road then turn on to the mountain and make his way over the top for the same distance till he gets to the fence. Eventually that was all concluded and I returned to my blog.
Half an hour later the dog dashed out again. (This is quite useful as I am getting a bit deaf and do not always hear vehicles coming up the track.) This time it is a chap from Scottish Power to inspect my electricity poles. Now he is not originally Welsh nor even a farmer but there are always things to discuss! How can he get to a neighbouring property, he can't find the track marked on his GPS system. I explain that it's only a grassy track across the field and I don't know whether the house is occupied at all. That seems daft as the house is in fact the nearest building to mine but over the brow of a gorse infested hill and I haven't been that way for decades. In the end we decide he would be wisest to say 'No access' as even if he found the right gate it's unlikely his van would get there.
We go on to discuss what he's going to do, the much better quality of 50 year old electricity poles, like mine, compared with modern ones, how slovenly British Telecom are when using Electricity poles, the probability that at some point another man will come to replace my antique wires that bring the electricity into the house, the age of the house (lost in the mists of time), what green measures he is doing to his house in Rhyl, how much he would like to live out in the country. Of course all this chat is not strictly necessary, but it's very pleasant leaning on the gate in the sun, even if I am still in my dressing gown. Eventually he replaces the 'Danger of Death' notices on my two poles, no not replace, adds to, the regulations have now changed so the notice has to be three metres from the ground instead of two. Wraps barbed wire round the post in the field in case I have a sudden urge to climb it. Have a discussion about the general ingnorance of Heath and Safety Laws and how useful they can be - no one can argue with him if he says it's too windy to do a particular job.
Eventually, he goes on his way to his next job and as it's now almost midday I think, perhaps I should have a shower and get dressed. No doubt he'll be telling his girlfriend about this odd old woman up in the hills!
My day has now reverted to the usual - boring housework, the minimum I can get away with, do some washing, letting the dog out for a run; shopping, can't do without a paper; and as my son's away for the week eating precisely what I like, and, hovering at the back of my mind, what on earth am I going to put in my portfolio? An e-mail received yesterday has upset a large part of my plans, the centrepiece was to be a review of a book supposed to be published last July but I now find won't be available till March! I expect I'll think of something else.....

Addaddendum - simple matter of changing the settings, s/he who seeks will find.

Addendum

For some reason best known to itself, it says I posted the last message at 02.39 am!!! Nonsense, it was more like 9.30 am. I suppose it's working on U.S. time. There must be some way of changing it, any ideas?

31.10.07

Read my notes from last night but the sun was in my eyes, so gave up. Tried to find this blog; did eventually - why? Well, it is part of my homework, must at least try to conform, or perhaps more accurately be seen to conform.