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Before/during |
The tail end of January is always a shade delicate in cash flow terms, since the pension gets paid before Christmas, and January starts to bring the credit card bills for the Christmas shopping. Still, February is a short month, and the first of the two months each year when we have a holiday from council tax, which is collected in ten instalments.
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After |
On the other hand, the noises off as I write are the sounds of hammering together a new fence to replace the one that got blown out in the storm just before Christmas - about £1 per hammer blow, I think. Since the firm does landscaping too, we've taken advantage of its on-site muscle to get a lot of ugly shrubs hoiked out - eleagnus, viburnum, laurel, escallonia and bird-sown cotoneaster. We're keeping the pieris, a pyracantha and a little beech tree, since they provide good colour. And as spring wears on and the ground begins to dry out, we'll think about re-planting. We'll need some vigorous subjects to mask the now bare leylandii trunks: there are ceanothus, hydrangea and spirea shrubs to re-plant, so maybe they'll do the trick for the time being. It's good to have a proper fence in place again. As I mentioned a while ago, the first time I came to have a look at the outside of the house, a couple of sections of fence were missing, and were bodged up with concrete spurs.
by the time we came to view 'officially'. They did their job, and held when other posts gave in to the Christmas storm. Well, even before the storm, several posts were loose, and with its rich variety of holes, gaps and crazy angles, the fence hardly did us credit: we'd have replaced it some time this year anyway. We expect a demo shortly by the local badgers and foxes, protesting at the cutting off of their ancient rights of way. Rather more likely, I fear, that they'll start digging new runs.
No further word of work in Another Place, so I think it may be time for rattling of gallic cages. We've been holding off travelling until we know when the work is to be done, and the year's calendar is already filling up.
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