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.