Sorry to have been silent for so long. It's the wannabeak interviewing season, so if I haven't been actually interviewing, I've been driving the forty-mile round trip, or sitting reading cvs and references. Six days' interviewing last month, and four more to come this. Add a couple of days at the hobby itself, plus hours poring over the latest utterances from the Ministry, and I start to feel as if my life ain't my own. Still, at least, having resigned from the Hobby Club, I no longer have that to worry about.
Consequently, the few fine days (when I've actually been at home!) have provided a welcome spot of fresh air and modest exercise. I've done a few hours' worth of slash and burn in the garden, an incidental benefit of which is to bring some colourful primulas out into the open from where they'd been smothered by penstemons. The snowdrops and crocuses have come and gone, but the daffodils and narcissi are still providing lots of colour. The cornus cuttings I brought from Smith Towers eight years ago seem finally to be getting into their stride here. Extraordinary, considering what a thug the parent plant was. Anyway, they've had their annual haircut, and are shooting away well. Next fine day we get, I'll be out with the shears, shaping up some leggy hebes and the box 'gate post'. I'm tempted to hoik out the pyracantha at the other side of the drive-in and start another box in its place. They might just about match before I turn my toes up.
The leeks and beans are germinating like mad in the conservatory: I think I may have been a bit quick off the mark with the latter: we'll see. The seeds we saved from the delicious yellow runner beans grown last year from Annie's seeds are germinating well, as are the dwarf french beans from Fortnums. Onion sets are shooting away, but we await the first signs of potato foliage above the surface of the compost, and of the first sowing of lettuce. Must take stock of flower seeds and get them started.
The robins and dunnocks have learned to feed from the hanging container of suet balls, and Cock Robin is looking a bit emaciated, much of his energy being devoted to courtship feeding of Mrs R. We had four goldfinches in the garden just now: we see them rarely, but on doing so, tend to dash out to buy a nijer seed feeder - which they proceed systematically to ignore. Insomniac early mornings are punctuated by dialogue between the local tawny owls, often quite close to the house. I did just manage to see one once, but not lately.
I had my long-awaited letter from the Department of Work and Pensions the other day. On attempting to claim on line, I found that I had to apply for a username and password, which will eventually arrive on paper. One thing I'm asked to have ready is my social security number in each of the countries I worked in abroad. I have one for Switz, but not for the other countries (though I have dug out a tax number for Germany - not that, having spent all of five months there, my entitlement will amount to a row of beans). In any case, I continued to pay National Insurance contributions while I was abroad, so it's hard to know what use the information will be to the DWP.
It might, on the other hand, get me some modest income from the other countries. I signed away my rights to a Belgian pension second time round, but am asking former colleagues to check whether anything is on file for my longer first stint there. A spot of pension from France would come in handy, though I doubt if it would pay the property taxes in Another Place. If the only benefit is the renewal of contacts with former colleagues in the various countries, then that's already reward enough.
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