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Daydream fund challenge part 4
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Just stopped raining - been hail showers through the night. I must strip a few seeds off a lovely shrub I have but will leave plenty for the blackbirds as they love them. It is wet wet wet.
I had something largish in the shed - I think possibly a pine martin. It's knocked some sacks of stuff over. It can get in through some gaps I have in the eaves. The cat was going mad when he went in and smelt it.
OH's mobility isn't what it was and I don't drive a car - I think I've left it too late. We are too remote I feel but I have loved the being able to be snucked down here amidst all the trees and all the wildlife - even though it does tend to eat my hens!
It will be a wrench but I can see us moving in the next five years. I just will make a bleddy awful neighbour as I am not used to them.
I have a friend whose neighbours can walk past her kitchen window and when sat there I just can't believe it. I just stare open-mouthed as if watching specimens in some alien landscape - it's just too weird.
We currently seem to have around 1 or 2 decent days a week and the rest is WET. So even on the dry days it is difficult to do anything constructive on the sodden ground. Hoping for a dry spell.
PS Ted - seriously look at getting driving lessons. I once got a lift with an very elderly family friend who was learning. Scary because she didn't drive over 20 mph, and even scarier because her informal teacher couldn't turn his head and relied on his wife telling him when the cost was clear at junctions.
She had to learn because her younger brother had died on a heart attack (ambulance too far away at the time). Better to pass the theory and then get some lessons before OH can't drive. OK, you might want him next to you to advise but at least you could manage until you sold up and moved somewhere with better transport options, even if it's taxis.
I second this because you should never give up your independence.
Also one should always bear in mind not only what help might be available but how difficult one finds it to actually bring oneself to request help from someone else/the relevant agency.
If you are the sort of person who can't bring themselves to request help until they're really desperate you should allow for that factor too and prioritise the skills, knowledge and equipment necessary to maintain your independence.
Consider how frightful it would be to have your whole daily existence determined by someone else and then make sure that doesn't happen to you.
Scallops. A host of legends surround this, one of the loveliest of seafoods, except when overcooked. My favourite true story concerns the young lady scallop preparation worker, interviewed by the 'New Yorker' Magazine. When asked for her honest opinion of the shellfish she said "They don't have much personality".
From Patrick Anthony's International MENU Dictionary.
After a very sodden weekend the river was high when I crossed the county boundary, but not more so than in February; no herons wading. Still struggled to find some things in my size. Having lost weight, I seem to be average which means less on the rails.
Coming back was fun, the police had closed the bridge for the first time I can remember, so re-routed up-stream on the north side, everything on the south bank heading further upstream was being diverted onto the same bridge as well as all the traffic off the main road. So took nearly an hour to 'travel' about 600 yards from one side to the other of the river. I'm hoping my friend who was flooded 3 times in 2015 is OK, although they now have sandbags at the ready at all times.
Big gales here & lost the little poly house thing with all the cuttings and pots & paraphernalia. Fence down at the hens and a few trees - stragglers but good firewood. Electric was off for a bit. Still camper vans around. It's been really wet here too - we are wet normally but this is uber-wet.