Pride cometh...

I decided to go out for a little walk this morning before the rain came, and was feeling quite pleased with myself, particularly at having found an easy circuit close to home.  Unfortunately, the new bit I discovered was rather muddy, and I slipped and fell.  Nothing worse than bruised dignity and muddy clothes (now washed), but it did prompt me to remember (a) to wear suitable shoes, and (b) to take the phone with me when I go walking alone, in case I fall and break something.

That aside, we continue to watch the water trickling down the trench in the lawn.  Ben and Duncan should be back again tomorrow.  I have radically pruned the rose closest to where they’ll terminate the new drains: it sticks out over the void rather threateningly!  It’s very vigorous, so despite brutal pruning and some disturbance to the roots, I’m confident it’ll be back better than ever next season.  It’s by Fryers Roses: The Justice of the Peace.  The picture doesn’t show the incredible profusion of flowers it gives over a long flowering season, but it does show the perfection of each flower.  In the background, of course, is the sedum I got from Miss as a tiny cutting, and which delights the local bees each summer.  You’ll gather maybe, that the garden is about the best investment we can make in these tarsome times.

Water, water: gas and electricity

Once the trench was dug for the sleeper wall that will retain the bed across the back of the garden, it soon started filling up with water.  There was a steady trickle out of the side of the trench, which is not a winning formula for any kind of retaining wall, let alone oak.  Today, Duncan has dug a trench down to the drain on the terrace, following the line of what I’d said I suspected to be an existing land drain. Sure enough, a spit or so down is a ceramic pipe leading to a plastic one leading to the side of the drain.   (It seems that there is quite a network of land drains under the back garden, which is nevertheless swamp-like for much of the winter.) There was a pretty impressive gush of water when he finished the trench, and the water has continued to trickle steadily down ever since.  So the chaps have a bit of design work to do to ensure that the water continues free to drain away: we seem to have a seasonal underground stream.  As Ben said yesterday, it’s just as well the work wasn’t done in the summer, since the problem would not have been in evidence until the winter rains came.  It’s not often that I feel grateful for weather such as we’ve had in recent days!  All this will add significantly to the final bill, but the money’s doing bugger-all in the bank, so we might as well get value for it.  So, it looks like I’m on tea making duties for a few more days.

Yesterday’s other little surprise was that our energy supplier ceased trading without warning.  No notification from the company itself: I learned about it in an email from Money Saving Expert.  On their advice I took meter readings, emailed them to myself with a date stamp, and cancelled the direct debit.  I have today received an automated shriek from Green Network Energy - from beyond the grave, as it were.  Evidently, the regulator will reassign accounts of this and another newly defunct company to another supplier, pending which we and the half-million other customers affected are told to sit on our hands and not switch suppliers for the time being.  I wonder what this will mean for the smart meters we had installed recently with so much Ach und Krach.  I really begin to wonder about the Thatcherian clamour for competition and privatisation.  Prices have steadily increased, customer service has gone from mediocre to poor, and customers have to act regularly to avoid being slammed back on to suppliers’ top tariffs.  I begin to hanker after a state monopoly, though it’s hard to see how that would achieve customer focus.  It would at least stop us paying excessive profits to the owners and shareholders of energy companies - most of which are foreign states with virtually intact home monopolies.  Snarl.

GSI

We don’t do huge amounts of DIY these days, preferring to Get Someone In.   Certainly a project of this scale is well beyond our capabilities these days, and I doubt things would have been too different back in our prime.  But we particularly wanted rid of the leylandii, and to have a decorative backdrop to the garden.  So digging deep in the pockets, we’ve commissioned Ben to do the real digging.  He got some tree surgeons in this morning to grind out the leylandii roots, and, together with colleague Duncan, has already cut the line of the new path.  Next comes the digging of the trench for the vertical oak sleepers that will make a retaining wall for the new bed.

After that, it’s a new veggie bed alongside the existing path, and some clearing out of the weed patch next to the sitooterie.  I’m doing little more strenuous than making tea at intervals.  

Old friend returns

I was banging on a while ago about the history of my favourite armchair, and how I’d decided to treat it to a proper reupholstery job.  Well, here it is, looking and feeling like brand new.  I could probably have got three from IKEA for what it cost, but not to this standard.  I may well drop off in it this afternoon, after a day and a half of work in the kitchen.

The first batch of marmalade is in the cupboard, and the second lot is cooling, accompanied by the occasional satisfying ping as the lids tighten down.  I posted the recipe three years ago if you feel the need to consult it.  Given my reluctance to go to the shops these day, I was almost resigned to not making any marmalade this year, and mentioned the fact to Annie.  She suggested that I get Seville oranges delivered by Abel & Cole, as her sister-in-law had done.  Excellent suggestion - and they even delivered 10% more than I’d paid for.  I did all the fruit preparation yesterday and boiled up the first batch.  It was still pretty runny when I went to bed, so I thought I might have to boil it up again this morning.  But by morning it had set, if not quite to my preferred level.  It’ll do.  I was more patient with the second batch: we’ll see tomorrow if that has paid off.

We are getting heavily into on-line shopping these days.  Martyn found an on-line source of our preferred brand of bangers (there’s nothing quite like Speldhursts), and made up an order including a ‘super greens veg box’.  Gosh!  Fennel bulb, apples, kiwis, avocados, courgettes and much else, including enough curly kale to keep an army regular.  

Next in line is the Sainsbury’s list, due in later this afternoon.  We find that, if we log on in the small hours we can get a delivery slot for seven days later.  I’ve tended in the past to shop from hand to mouth, so these trying times call for substantially more planning.  We nevertheless ran out of milk this week, so I had - reluctantly - to make a very rapid visit to said supermarket.  I’ll be a little less timid once I’ve had my first jab, but I’m still waiting for the call.

It looks as if Ben and colleagues will be making a start on the garden soon, so I’ve placed an order for veggie seeds.  Meanwhile, I’ll dig up and pot a few dormant roses that need to be moved to allow Ben to clear a bed that’s full of ivy and miscellaneous other pests.  So we just need to survive long enough to enjoy it!

The birds

Martyn has cleaned and refilled the feeders, so we’re getting a few visitors.  Mainly long-tailed and blue tits (which reminds me: I need to get the nest boxes down and cleaned).  We hear a lot from the robins, wrens and dunnocks, and see them once in a while.  Martyn saw a small bird picking at one of the roses the other morning, and a spot of research showed it to be a goldcrest, Britain’s smallest bird.  Rather exciting: first time we’ve either of us seen one.  I hope it stays local, and develops a taste for greenfly.  Today we watched some fieldfares systematically stripping the red berries from a neighbour’s shrub.  They tend to come into town when the weather is very cold, so may have done a recce in yesterday’s hard frost.  I was reminded of a few days at my old place up the road when I sat in my study watching the blackbirds stripping the berries from a neighbour’s pyracantha.  

All of which is not exactly a substitute for our local U3A bird watching group outings, which we miss.  Still, the organiser is keeping us informed of his sightings via a Facebook page, though the current restrictions may limit his watching to brief walks in the park for the duration.  

Home and - fortunately - away

As for the ‘away’ bit, I won’t dwell too long on Wednesday’s events in the Land of the Free.  Sufficient to say that N°45 must be held accountable for them, and that I fear it’ll need a more vigorous president than N°46 to sort things out.  Closer to home, the realities of Brexit are slowly becoming evident, eg delays in deliveries of vaccine, the spurning of the offer for artists and musicians to travel visa-free, suspension of parcel delivery services - the list goes on and on, so let’s move on before my blood pressure goes sky-high.

As for deliveries, we are getting a lot of them.  Yesterday brought a new wall cabinet for the shower room, and between us we managed to get the brute installed.  I’ve yet to test the demisting mirror, but the lighting is good enough to depress me at the sight of my January-pasty face when I shave.  Next was a case of wine, a couple of days later than promised, hence all the more welcome.  Today brought our first delivery of groceries, delivered an hour or so early by a cheerful young chap.  

I haven’t yet studied the current etiquette of dealing with grocery deliveries, which must surely have evolved a bit since I last performed the task.  One customer used to tip me 6d, another gave me one of her Cadets cigarettes (anyone remember them?).  Anyway, the job, though miserably paid, relieved my parents very slightly of the cost of sending me to university.  On reflection, I ought to have sued my then boss for the damage to my back caused by carrying huge boxes of canned goods up two flights of stairs to his flat: it has never recovered.

Friday’s visitors were the chaps from the fencing contractor hired by the agents of next door’s absentee landlords.  It struck me that, by letting them work from our side, they could shore up the rotten fence posts  at less expense, so I made the suggestion, and they responded pretty promptly.  While they were at it, I asked them to spur one of our rotten fence posts (25-year guarantee, my arse!).  The chaps came about when they said they would, did the work well, and offered to do some work on other wobbly bits of our fence, also very well.  Much brewing of tea, of course, and a modest tip of brownish plastic.  Just hope there won’t be any nasty surprises when the bill crashes in.

We’re slowly working through our last meat delivery, and I’ve made lentil soup with the stock from boiling the delicious gammon.  The pressure cooker was back in action before it could cool, making stock from the chicken carcass.  Things are a lot more expensive under our present regime, so we’re all the more enthusiastic about making the most of leftovers.  Next in line will be some bread: the last batch was predominantly wholemeal, and the proving finished while we were grunting and groaning at the hanging of the new shower room cabinet.  The dough had consequently sunk, and the loaves, though tasty, are somewhat adamantine.  Can’t win ‘em all, eh Donald?

Annus mirabilis 2021

Here comes another one.  Wonder if we’ll survive it.  The infection rate hereabouts is over the national average, but the lowest in the county, so we’re just redoubling our precautions and waiting patiently for our jabs.  I’m cutting down on shopping trips: wine delivered today, meat tomorrow and a Sainsbury’s delivery on Sunday.  And we’re getting more resourceful at feeding ourselves from the freezer.

Last August I accepted an estimate to re-upholster my favourite armchair, hoping that it would come in as a slightly late 70th birthday present to myself.  As the months passed, I began to hope for it as a Christmas present.  No such luck, but Colin is coming to collect it tomorrow afternoon, so perhaps it’ll be ready by my 71st.  I was reflecting earlier on its origins and history.  I acquired it from Uncle Charles in 1980, when he was clearing his house in Wanstead.  It was pretty tired by then, having been on station for years at the dining room French windows, where Doris used to sit reading her poxy Daily Express.  

By then it had acquired a loose cover, which remained for a year or two in my ownership, stationed at a dining room window again, only by then in my little house in Tonbridge.  At the suggestion of another uncle, I signed up for an upholstery class, and beavered away at it through the winter of 1983/84, under the instruction of one Allan Upsher.  I have replaced the cushion and springs meanwhile, but otherwise it has given me decades of good service, and is now stationed at yet another dining room window here at Forges-l’Evêque.  Doris will be turning in her urn at the thought of my sitting here reading the Grauniad on the iPad.

When I was working on the chair, I had to schlepp it weekly from the house to the car, and then up two flights of stairs to the adult education upholstery classroom.  I am no longer in my thirties, so will need Martyn’s help to haul it out to the garage for Colin to collect tomorrow.  Colin, by the way, is Allan’s son, and the work will probably be done by Allan’s grandson.  And being done by professionals this time, it should last, as I think I said a while back, till I’m 110.

I spent a bit of New Year’s Day (which I saw in through closed eyelids) hauling out the frosted cosmos.  They flowered very well in November (some of them, anyway) but are very tender and were hammered by the frost.  I regard it as a matter of principle that the paid-for garden waste bin must have something in it for every £2 fortnightly collection, so it’s pretty full of dead cosmos now.  I may gather up some willow leaves before next Monday, or Tuesday, or whenever the hell they get round to collecting.  But since we aren’t generating a lot of waste, maybe I’ll save them for the next one!