It's nearly March . . .

I have been going back through my photos, saving them (VERY slowly) to Amazon Cloud drive, so that if my computer goes belly-up, I have them stored safely.  This is one of the photos which I love and takes me back to going to Badminton Horse Trials with my friend Jude, and then we took the scenic route home.  This is - I am pretty certain - a corner of Frocester Hill near Stroud in Gloucestershire, looking across the Severn Plain towards Wales - only Wales is hidden in the haze.

I feel in need of some warmer memories today!  I will be so glad when Friday brings us the month of March and of course it will be St David's Day here in Wales and the schoolchildren will be dressed up as little old-fashioned Welsh children and everyone will be sporting a daffodil.

And I just had re re-use this window (at Fiddleford Mill in Dorset) looking across the verdant water meadow.  You just don't get greener green that this!

K and I had a walk along the river today, and got some more firewood - a cut branch wedged in the fork of a tree some 15 feet above the current river level.  I found what I called a witch's stick - a length of river-polished hardened wood which may have been ivy once, as several twines of wood writhe sinuously together.  I am going to clean it up, and decorate it and then I will show you it on here.

I needed to get some baking done too, so we now have two Double-ginger Ginger Cakes in the fridge, and then it was back out to the top of the stable yard to carry on chopping up and clearing the smallest of the ivy trees felled on Sunday.  There is a good bit of wood there, but an awful lot of trash and ivy foliage to burn.

I slept very badly last night, but hope to catch up on my sleep tonight - I need to be on the ball tomorrow so hopefully I won't be awake until nearly 2 a.m. like last night.  I had a lot on my mind, and aching calf muscles, and I was trying to be happy for our eldest daughter on holiday in Morocco - rather than worrying about her!

This is one of the felled trees so you can see how thick the swarm of ivy around it -  a veritable cat's cradle .  We have a nice view of the opposite side of the valley now.

Keep warm everyone.

Winter Blues

Well, thank heavens I have the computer working again.  Scared by the possibility of it just going completely belly-up one day I am taking the precaution of loading my most important photos onto Amazon Cloud.  Two big files took nearly ALL DAY to load yesterday as this computer (10 years old now!) is soooooooo slow.  I have some backed up on disc, and some of the older ones on Photobucket, so I need to sit down for a day and sort out what is where . . .

Mind you, sitting down up here for a day is not really possible at the moment as the house is just so cold away from the woodburner, or the kitchen first thing in the morning when we have the Hergom on for an hour or so.  The temperature in most of the house is about 10 degrees C (50F) and we are low on oil and have no money to top up as we have a big electricity bill due.  I hope we have a long hot summer which starts in March!!!

 We have had plenty of time to gaze upon this view lately . . .

Anyway, since we have been without a phone line, and the distraction of broadband, I have been working on the research for my Edward Thomas talk and K and I have been busy harvesting wood for next winter's fuel.  Last summer was so dire and wet that we left it late to cut and split wood, and because of the rain it went away damp and has burned damp and cool all winter.  Only now are we getting some decent stuff on the fire, and that is from a couple of long-dead trees that the river brought our way.  K also felled 2 doddering old ivy-clad Ash trees at the top of our yard, and there is one more trunk to fell but the lean on it means it will go backwards over Next Door's fence so we need to check out with him if we can flatten his fence and then resurrect it again.  We have been enjoying Mountain Men on Sky (not seen the series before) and inasmuch as we have always been fairly self-reliant here, we can understand the way of life these men have chosen.  Definite shades of Mountain Men when we got the rope across the river from pole to pole for BT! The river bought us a wonderful seasoned oak trunk.  It was the very devil to chainsaw and kept blunting the blade, but we got it in three pieces.  The smallest we managed to get back to the car (a 50 yard carry).  The biggest is still there.  The middle piece we FINALLY, after much levering and struggling as the two ends kept falling in to the middle and trapping the piece we needed to remove, got the middle section moved.  K and I began to try and get wedges in to split it as he wanted some planking to make an oak coffer for our bedroom.  Anyway, at the end of 2 mornings' work with this, we gave ourselves the afternoon off.  Next day, some barsteward came and took it.  We were NOT AMUSED.  It was a two man carry and I was just not up to carrying it. It must have weighed well over a hundredweight and had to be got up a bank first . . .

I had a stroll up the lane yesterday whilst K cut wood, and saw the first wee Tenby daffodils out on a sunny bank.  Not as many as in the top picture, but things are going the right way.  We just need a bit of spring sunshine ahead of its time to come and cheer us up.

The cats are keeping warm (they're no fools) and are to be found near the fire and on our bed, depending on their dispositions.  Here are Miffy and her son Alfie (aka Wild Thing as he is a bit nervous and gets silly!) on the cart shed door.

I have found that all my photos from past postings now seem to have been saved to Picasa, which is handy . . .  At least I can be generous with the photos again.

Today our daughter T goes on holiday to Marrakesh with her best friend from work.  I am envious.  I hope she enjoys it and forgets all about work, as her job is hanging by the balance there and she faces the real threat of redundency as they are doing it on a best interview criteria and she has always struggled with interviews.  She has missed out on two posts she interviewed for - being offered a 12 hour contract yesterday - who can live on the wages of 12 hours' work - especially as it is spread over a week so she would have to be in two hours here and two hours there and not be able to look for a 2nd job?  She was on 30 hours before and this was topped up with Working Tax Credit to a living wage.  Say a prayer for her that she gets her Visitor Assistant position back and at decent hours . . .

Well, this is my Volunteering Day, so I had better sort myself out.  Here is the view across the Deer Park . . .

I don't believe it!

I turned my computer  on this morning to find that lt wasn'tworking. this be ingwritten on our kindle and I have 't usedit before.back on Monday.

Sanity restored

I am incredibly relieved to say that we are now back on line and with a working phone.  Hopefully my blood pressure will now sink back to normal levels. 

A random photo - taken when walking up to Llyn-y-Fan-Fach one summer.  You can just see a wee birdy on the rock, but can't remember what it was - looks a bit like a Grey (Water) Wagtail.

I shall return . . . Meanwhile, thank you all for holding the faith.

The Saturday Post - Let's Buy British

I am hoping that this is the last weekend without a phone line and broadband, although we have learned how to cope because it has taken so long.  Two months and counting.  The 19th (Tuesday) is the current "do by" date, so fingers crossed.  According to our local paper, the Western Mail, if you are a heavy internet user, you get withdrawal symptoms similar to withdrawal from regular Ecstasy use.  That is, when you have no internet access.  Whilst I've never taken Ecstasy, I did suffer without my internet for that first month!

Meanwhile, my husband and I (whenever I write that, I hear the Queen's voice in my head!!!) are continuing with logging for next winter, and if you have ever seen the Mountain Men programme on Sky (love it) we are beginning to feel just like them.  We are currently harvesting a well-seasoned fallen oak, the middle chunk of which my husband is planning to try and split today to build a coffer from, and the chunks either side, which are bent and damaged, are firewood.  Heavens, it weighs an absolute ton though, I can't manage to carry even a small slice!  The tannin in it smells just like Daddy's Sauce (Brown Sauce to the uninitiated) when you cut it.  Strange.  Now I have a note of how the old tanneries must have smelt, as they used oak bark for tanning leather (I can remember, in my youth, buying stirrup leathers which were oak bark tanned).

Well, the horsemeat furore carries on apace and it would seem that unless we are strict vegetarians or vegans, we have been eating it in all sorts of disguises down the years.  It doesn't surprise or disgust me (although I would NEVER choose to eat horse meat, having owned horses all my life) but I am hoping that something positive may come from this and that the return to supporting our local butchers instead of buying blindly at the supermarket (though personally I cook from scratch and have never had anything more ready-meal than a fish-finger or pizza).  I hope that the NFU's adverts in the National newspapers this weekend for fresh sourcable BRITISH meat will influence the British public.  After all, it ticks so many boxes and helps the British economy - particularly British farmers who have been struggling for years to keep their heads above water.  Eynon's, the superb butcher we use at St Clear's (far too infrequently, I will own) is an expert at accountability and advertises the name of the farm where the beef/lamb/pork etc came from.  The venison comes from the Queen's estates at Balmoral and is WONDERFUL.  All this meat has lived a good life, had a good death, been properly hung, prepared, and if you think lamb is lamb is lamb - try lamb raised on salt marshes - the flavour is out of this world.  Far better for us to eat less meat, but when we do get it, to go for top quality meat such at Eynon's and similar butchers sell.  Far better for people to learn to cook from scratch too, and I understand that Michael Gove is aiming to introduce cooking skills back into the school curriculum - and not as part of Design & Technology where the food had to be designed - one dish in various guises, rather than learning  how to cook a good soup, stew, cake or loaf of bread which was what we learned in "Cookery" lessons back in the 1960s.

Have a good weekend all.

We have a POLE!

Quick update.  We found the pole-men at work down on our river bank yesterday.  On our return from town, the pole was up and we are now waiting for the line-men to come and do THEIR bit.  Progress and a little bit of hope.  Being ignored all the time is SO frustrating.

T has now gone back to Sheffield, and rounds of form-filling and interviews (including for her own job as hours are being reduced and people being made redundant) and she is also house-hunting, so keep all your fingers crossed for her please.

G very happy in her new job and D is talking of returning home to live so he can save more for travelling to Oz and the Far East.  Just when we were enjoying having the house to ourselves . . . though I have to say it will be nice to have him back again and help him with his plans.

I am busy working on a crochet throw, after "inheriting" a partly-worked large granny square in white with the suitcase of material I bought recently at the car boot sale.  It is wonderfully mindless to work on in the evenings and is slowly progressing.

I have seen the first signs of spring in a Celendine (which had gone over already, so others can't be too far behind), a bank of Primroses, and the first frog-spawn in the pond (the main one, rather than the wildlife pond.)  There were also three Robins in one of the apple trees, so it looks like we shall have some battles amongst them soon.

I am looking forward to being able to write up my blog properly AND add photos again.  I am afraid I feel like I am just treading water here at present.

Thank you all for all your letters - they are keeping me going!

ET - makes a change from BT . . .

They (BT) have renagued on Friday's date, and Saturday's date.  Only they didn't contact me, as they promised in the morning, instead they texted a friend of mine in Oxfordshire, who had been chasing them up as she was worried about me being so long without a phone. She had to forward the bad news to me. I am climbing the bloomin' walls here from frustration.  We have a new date - 19th February.  I am about to e-mail MP again, BT Parliamentary representative etc and then our local newspaper - they could do with a front page story - it doesn't take much to become one either, round here.

I assume all the neighbours who now also have no phone line, will also be off until the 19th.

Meanwhile, T is here so we are doing companionable things together and will be making bread, a lemon drizzle cake and then beef goulash for tea.  I have been working on my Edward Thomas notes, and found some research I did last year, which has helped me along a bit.

If you are one of the people in touch with me by letter only, keep them coming.  It saves my sanity!