Of birds, beaks and bolshiness

Eyesight tests yesterday: no significant change to my prescription, but the decades-old pressure problem has reached the point at which I’m to be referred for the thickness of my corneas to be measured. If they are of above average thickness, that could account for the high readings, and all that’ll be needed will be to give me a sort of handicap to deduct from the pressure readings in future. I don’t think they carve them out and measure them with a micrometer, but I’ll soon find out! We had decided to stay with that particular optician (who is a bench colleague) because of the great thoroughness of his optometrist. Who – surprise, surprise - left the practice at close of business yesterday: I draw no inference as to cause and effect. It was a bit of a trek to have the examination: he has closed his branch near us, so I’d an hour and a half’s round trip. But it’s an ill wind: I’ve been meaning to get a new waterproof jacket for some time, and the outdoor outfitters near the optician’s place had one in their sale.

The birds clearly appreciate the ground feeder trays we bought with a garden voucher from Dorothy last Christmas. The pair of mallards seems to be visiting us daily at least, and we’re seeing lots more chaffinches, siskins and collar doves. I saw a chiff-chaff in one of the silver birches opposite us yesterday, and there was a fine great spotted woodpecker at the fat feeder later. The ducks are amazing – utter bellies on legs, hoovering up the contents of a tray in no time flat, then coming and tapping on the French window to ask for a refill.

Slightly nervous: I have a court sitting today, my first in over 6 weeks. Last time, I was distinctly rusty, and today I’m mentoring a new magistrate: I’m taking him over from a colleague who is waiting for surgery for a back problem, poor thing. I’ll be interested to hear the retiring room banter. The beakdom is up in arms at government’s proposal to reduce our travelling and subsistence rates in line with the rest of the judiciary (whose other terms and conditions are so close to ours, after all), despite the existence of a recently agreed formula that reflected fluctuations in the price of fuel. So now, with fuel at a record high price, the plan is to cut our mileage rate by a third, and to halve our subsistence rates and impose a longer minimum period of absence from home. To use public transport would, at best, take me three times as long as going by car, and would cost more. There’s also the small matter of rubbing shoulders with the customers at the station, which is not the greatest idea, eh? I suspect that the hidden agenda is to provoke magistrates into resigning. Added to the complete sham of ‘consultation’ on courthouse closures, it could lead to our losing quite a few.

Trekked up to London for a Trustees’ meeting yesterday evening. The ‘permit to travel’ machine at our unmanned local station swallowed my money and failed to deliver a permit. The conductor did not come round collecting fares, so I’d to queue up at London Bridge to pay my fare, and of course, the wee mannie wouldn’t give me back the money swallowed by the machine: ‘you’ll have to talk to Customer Service’. Well, I will, dammit. And by the time I’ve finished with them, it will have cost them about £50 in staff costs. The amount in question? 20p. Don’t mess with a grumpy old Scotsman.

Dahlias sprouting, conservatory overrun with seedlings, lots of stuff coming to life in the garden. I think I even have a touch of cranial sunburn after a sketching session outside the scout hut this morning. Miss had brought another load of flints, driftwood etc, so it was another exercise in tone and texture. The scouts, by the way, have been brewing up in the back garden, so we had a supply of really rather nice charcoal for our sketching! What with the sloes in the hedge at the side of the garden and a free charcoal supply, I feel altogether better disposed towards our local juvenile para-militaries.

Miss has, however, relented to the extent of letting us do what we like for the next four weeks. For all of which I shall be either in court or Lagrasse. Shame, but there are worse fates.

Tomorrow starts our last week of heaving the garage doors about. They are solid timber, and a bit of a struggle for those of us given to episodes of sciatica. A local garage door fettler will be here to sort them tomorrow week, whereupon we shall, I hope, be able to radio in for clearance to land as we drive up the street.

The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra la…

Rhododendron praecox showing colour, daffodils (flattened by the rain), polyanthus etc, etc. I’ve spent a lot of yesterday and today outside, though yesterday had largely to do with the vast amounts of laundry that had accumulated while I was waiting for a good day. (It gives me a grim satisfaction to deprive the great electricity conspiracy of the revenue from running a tumble dryer.) Today I have gardened a bit: I’ve moved some of the achillea and antirrhinum seedlings into trays to grow on till they’re ready to plant out in May, and done a bit of re-potting and weeding. It’s the time of year when the conservatory starts to look like a greenhouse.

The birds are getting active and noisy: we’re getting regular visits from a pair of very hungry mallards, and the pigeons are appreciating the ground feeder trays we’ve recently started stocking. The dunnocks are back, and I saw a wren yesterday. Other than that, it’s the usual suspects: robins, blue and great tits, drama-queen blackbirds and the chaffinch with its inane repetitive song.

Enjoyable visit from Annie at the weekend: some socialising, a bit of culture and a bit of companionable silence with our books. Jan and Mark came for dinner on Saturday: I'd got the butcher do cut me some nice thin slices of topside for beef olives, and it worked better than the rump steak I got from the other butcher. Martyn made his celebrated bruschette for starters, and Mr Morrison procured a couple of French tarts for us. We were surprisingly ready for roast beef for lunch next day at Jane's! That was a nice little gathering: she had invited a former fellow magistrate as well, so the six of us enjoyed a good chatter, finally rising from the table at 6:00 pm!

On Monday we went to an exhibition of English watercolours and drawings at the Courtauld, via the Café Rouge in Wellington Street where, since we'd been eating so sparingly at the weekend, we got stuck into steak-frites, puddings and a bottle of merlot. Life is hard, I tell ya.

What else? After a week of dry weather, the grass was just dry enough on Saturday for me to get out and cut it. The motor mower is not all that easy to operate, but I'm starting to learn its little ways, and it is easy to start. I'm not sure whether I grizzled here last year about the price of getting the hedges trimmed. Some of them I can do myself, but the tall ones across the back and at the side are a bit much without specialist kit. In 2009 I took our usual chap on trust, and he came back with a bill for £190. This year I asked the fellow from the nearby farm to quote, and he charged us £70 for a job that was every bit as good. So, with the garden returning to life and a shade more kempt and shevelled, it's looking good out there. I must make a start today on pricking out the vast numbers of seedlings: the achilleas, lobelias, antirrhinums and some rudbeckias have germinated well, so I have a lot of work to do.

I was to have been in court on Monday to finish a part-heard trial that we began last December, and that was already 18 months after the matters complained of. I am trying to find out at whose instigation it was 'vacated'. Didn't help that I've lost today's sitting as well, since the courtroom was needed for a yoof trial. I have sat in the Magistrates' Court precisely once in the past three months, and I was terribly rusty last time. Oh well, I have an extra at the end of the month, since I have taken over a new Magistrate for his last two mentored sittings, his original mentor being unwell.

I see that the Orbieu has been up to its tricks again, though the graph started to flatten yesterday at a little over 3 metres. Fortunately, I hadn't been watching it, so the danger had come and gone by the time I was aware of it. Of course, even if we'd flooded to the first floor, it would be a little local difficulty by comparison with the awful events in Japan.

Spring?

Hard frost this morning, but hazy sunshine all day. For the first time this year, I sat outside for lunch, while the laundry flapped gently in the breeze. A few daffodils have opened, and a honey bee was visiting the wide open crocuses when I happened to be passing. The birds are obviously starting to think about nesting sites, so it's just as well we have someone coming next week to trim the green unité d'habitation at the back of the garden. For a little over a third of the price last year's jokers charged us. Remains to be seen what the quality's like, of course.

Triumph! We have a cleaner at last: a friend of a friend. I know that could be a delicate situation if there were issues, but I don't think that's likely. On first acquaintance, I'd say that Hope's title as all-time champion cleaner is safe, but a bit of help is more than welcome.

Tomorrow brings a visit from a garage door fettler. It seems to me that we've earned a bit of luxury in our declining years, and that it is time to stop putting backs out opening and closing heavy timber doors. Remains to be seen, of course, how salty the bill will be, as the French would say. We won't be buying on the basis of a single estimate, so there ought to be some haggle-room.

Picked up a pack of four dahlia tubers at Fortnum’s just now for £1.29. They’ve been a bit ill-used in their recent past, but seemed firm enough, so they are now in pots of compost in the conservatory. A lot of bits had broken off, so they are now in a seed tray in case they feel like springing into life. And if none of them do anything, they won’t have broken the bank. Oh, and the mushroom pack we started last weekend is starting into life and safely installed under the stairs.

And in case you needed further proof of the banality of one’s existence, today’s triumph was getting the laundry out on the line for the first time this year, said rotary line having undergone running repairs last weekend. Sad or wot? But I’m inordinately pleased at not having had to run the tumble dryer.

A colleague and I did a couple of sessions yesterday for Martyn’s ‘legal secs’. We ran a sentencing exercise, and it was a little disconcerting to learn how many of these bright young things are hangers, floggers, bang-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key merchants. But with a sheet of hard facts and sentencing guidelines in front of them, many turned into social workers manquées. Go figure.