Febuary

Febuary is the most dismal month of the year. The weather is bloody, winter seems unending and all our friends
head off for some winter sun to recover from the shooting season which has just ended.  How I wish we too could join them - though having said that I know I would very soon get bored lying in the sun and having nothing to do but read a book.  The answer is to grit the teeth and 'fight through Febuary' in the hope that March will herald a marvelous Spring.      

insurance

We have - so far - avoided a repeat of the burst pipe incident - but one of the silver linings of our water disaster is how very good our insurers, Hiscox, and our insurance broker, RKHarrison, have been.  People often forget the reason you have insurance is that when the 'shit hits the fan' the bloody insurance actually works - as it certainly has in our case.  How often have I heard friends, who once boasted how little they paid in premiums, bemoaning how, strangely, these discount insurers make every effort to wriggle out of the claim when disaster happens.  The other benefit of having the disaster is meeting and talking to the experts who have come to view the damage and make recommendations so the other day I had Patrick Baty the foremost paint archaeologist in the World ( who I once played soldiers with years back) clambering over the scaffolding in my Great Hall taking samples of paint witht he aim of establishing what the original colourt scheme was. all very exciting and proving once again that every cloud has a silver lining.      

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.