freezing weather

The freezing weather is playing havoc with my budget - normally we never have the heating on before January except as a treat on Christmas day - now as I write I hear the massive boiler pumping hot water round the system as it is based next door to my office - this is not just to heat the house - that is a minor consideration - it is to ensure that the pipes don't freeze and that we don't have a water disaster when the thaw sets in.  we have already had two burst pipes with consequent damage and I don't want a third.  

NHS

I have survived and am back home from hospital.  My experience of the NHS is that it is rather akin to driving up to London from Exeter on the A303.  There are times when you simply zip along on an empty road and then - for no apparent reason that you can see- the whole experiance changes to a nightmare and you sit in a traffic jam or crawl for ten miles for the best part of an hour or so till -suddenly -the road clears again and once more you travel at speed.  Like the A303 you know that the NHS will get you to your destination but- just as in driving up the A303 - in peculiar 'bunny hops' 

country dangers

So living in the country is safe - well I wish it was.  Every time I end up with a graze I seem to end up in Emergency Ward Ten.  Two weeks ago I slipped and fell and grazed my knee - no big deal.  Then - two days ago - the wife - ever vigilant for the slightest sign of illness in anyone of her flock - spotted an inflamation of the knee - for two days I managed to bluff my way but today she 'lost it' and I was hauled up before the doctor who has duly sentaeced me to at least a night in hospital being fed antibiotics on an intraveneous drip. This is the second time in three years this has happened - the last time I was in hospital for a week. Apparently the 'air (in Devon) is not alive with the sound of music' but alive with bugs and those bugs are all lying in wait for Fulford to develop a graze when they home in on it and try to kill him. Frankly it is all very puzzling - how on earth did our ancestors ever survive to adulthood is a mystery -still for the second time in three years I put my faith and life in the hands of the NHS and - oddly - when you do that they perform rather well.    

Buzzard

As temperatures are still sub zero we try to keep all doors and windows firmly shut. So imagine my surprise  to find, as I walked through the Great Parlour on my way to my office a sodding great buzzard flapping round the room -finally coming to rest on the frame of my mother's portrait. So how has it got in?  I supose it could have come down the chimney, in fact that is the only explanation which I can think of. Meanwhile I have a problem - what to do about said buzzard?  As ever - with problems - I thnink I will leave it till tommorow - who knows it might find it's way back up the chimmney but I am not optimistic - alternatively of course it could the spirit of some ancestor returning to see what we have been up too recently if so I hope it will buzz off by tomorrow morning. 

central heating

I have finally cracked. This morning I turned the central heating on.  I can't think when the last time was that we had the heating on in Novemember -if ever normally I don't turn it on till Christmas Day when it is done as a treat for the whole family. Bye bye golbal warming and hello to the new ice age.  I was inspired to this extravagant move by  Kishanda pointing out to me that the minimum temperature of a workplace by law was 61 degrees centigrade and our kitchen - even with the benefit of the Aga - was this morning only 55 degrees!  while the drawing room windows had ice on the inside and reminded me of breakfasts in my childhood when we used to draw pretty pictures on the ice which clad the interior of the dining room windows.  Of course it is not just for my benefit that I have turned on the heating - with the temperatures inside in parts of the house below freezing the dangers of frozen pipes and the resulting damage just seemd to great to ignore anymore.  

bonfires

My ancestors loved planting evergreen shrubs such as laurel and to a lesser extent, thank goodness,  ponticum rhododendrons, to give more interest to the woodland walks.  That of course was all very well when there where lots of men, as there where when I was a boy, who every year, armed with sickles, would trim the laurel growth back down.  But then one day there was no money to pay such men anymore and the laurel and ponticum left to itself went rampant till the woodland walks became literally impenetrable jungle.  For more than thirty years I have been happily hacking away at these evergreen monsters using them, in effect, as a form of outdoor gymnasium, and getting not only fitter and thinner as a result  but also enjoying a feeling of immense satsfaction at viewing the resultant improvement in my woodland walks.  A key part of the process is -of course - the bonfire.  I suppose in the current world a whole generation is going to grow up who have never made a bonfire as either they have been forbidden under some Health and Safety rule or banned as contributing to global warming.  That is sad as making a bonfire and getting one going to such a pitch that it will burn anything however green and full of sap it is that you can thow on it - is a noramlly highly skilled process.  Not though at the time of writing.  The hot summer has meant that bonfires virtually light themsleves and burn furiously within minutes. Oh what fun it all is and Oh how better my woodlands look because of the magic of the bonfire.   

London traffic

It takes a lot to get me up to London in the summer -especially a summer like this one - but if a an old firend asks you to come up to celebraste their 50th birthday - well - youv've just got to go.  London and the heat do not go.  However fortunately the night we spent in the metropolis was one of the cooler ones so we survived. Twice during our flying visit we hired a taxi and on both occaisions I was struck that all the good effects of the congestion charge in reducing congestion in central London seems to have gone by the board. I remember when the charge was first introduced the streets empties and suddenly buses roared around like sport cars. Not anymore they don't.  what I just can't understand is why anyone would want to drive their car in London anyway?  It seems to me to be such an utterly pointless and expensive activity that I am.forced to the conclusion that it is all really about showing off.  So come on Boris -if you are short of money for something just do the sensible thing - double the congestion charge.