Ave all,
Yay!, it’s been raining,
Lots.
Which is bad news for some quarters of these Isles, who currently entertain eels and other aquatic fauna behind the sofa. But for this drought stricken corner of the country it is manna from heaven.
You will note the use of the word “drought” because that is the term finally being used by Command Centre Central to describe the summer just passed. I was sent the following link by a visitor to this parish. Have a read, not sure why but there is a significant change of tone of late regarding groundwater levels this summer.
https://environmentagency.blog.gov.uk/2019/10/02/protecting-our-precious-chalk-streams/
Anyway enough of all that, I think I have used up my annual supply of the words “chronic”, “depletion” and “aquifers”
But I’ll just say that I have not yet had any replies to my queries to Command Centre Central listed in the previous post, they will be put up on here the minute they drop in the mail box.
Trees are on the turn and we have heavy dew each morning. Damp conditions are proving perfect for funny funghi although I’ve not picked any mushies yet this year. The Leverets that were born in the long grass in the meadow are now fully grown and have yet to find a way off the premises via one of three bridges. Grass has enjoyed a late flush and mowing between the showers has been a harem scarum dash up and down the bank before the next band of clouds sweeps in from the west.
This week I have mostly been cutting hedges,
which seems particularly apposite as The Fast Show celebrated its twenty fifth birthday recently. I have said it on here many times before but fences and walls are the future of boundary demarcation, hedges have had their day. I am a physical wreck after tickling up some of the leviathanic hedges that loom about this place. Forgive the product placement but the hedges were cut with a Stihl FS 85 electric pole trimmer whose battery has a life of one hour. Which is a blessing as the twenty minutes it takes to recharge is mostly spent flat out on the Physio’s table.
This crow has been hanging around for a few weeks. It’s a bit of a loner and I keep finding him/her in the fisherman’s toilet. I am sure there is a technical term for birds that hang around toilets but I’ve called him/her Upstart.
Upstart also feeds with the chickens who do not seem particularly bothered by him/her. Previous encounters with crows in the chicken pen have escalated quickly to violence with our chooks administering a battering to the overgrown blackbird.
We’ve two new additions to our flock. Light Sussex Hybrids, they are very sociable but a little abstemious when it comes to popping out eggs.
We've a bumper crop of hops this year. They seem to do well in our garden and up the river and I have used them in a home brewing capacity.
Many years ago when children were small, I formulated a plan to make a brew entirely from ingredients sourced within a few yards of our door. The water came from the aquifers beneath our home, the hops from the garden and the barley from the field behind. Barley was soaked and the garage swept out for the barley to chit. The chitted barley was then cooked over a fire made of wood from our log pile and malt extract was produced. I don't remember the source of the yeast, but it may have been from something long forgotten at the back of the fridge. The brew was formed and introduced to the fermentation vessel. Bottling the beer a few weeks later I was pleased with the clear amber brew. A few weeks later the first glass was poured. Beautifully bright and clear with a slight spritz and bright white head it looked like beer,
But it tasted of the garage floor.
Further home made alcohol capers to follow, I've had a few.
For many years we have taken the local newspaper. It’s an easy read and provides an insight to the antics of local town society. For ten years I contributed match reports and photographs for both football and cricket matches. It wasn’t a difficult brief. The word count was fairly low and one week I managed to get all eleven players of a football team mentioned in a one hundred and twenty-word report. It was produced in the local town, there was a dedicated sports editor, who I knew well, and between five and seven pages of sport. Maisie undertook her year ten work experience at the paper. Shadowing a reporter, one afternoon they received word of police cars massing in one part of town and raced down to live report on a drug bust on one of the more edgy estates in town. Despite the population of the local town increasing substantially over the past ten years, the market for the paper is deemed to be diminished and the newspaper is thrown together many miles away from here on the south coast. There is no dedicated sports editor and the five to seven pages of sport have been reduced to two, occasionally one if one of the local pizza emporia has an offer on and they take out a full page ad with money saving coupons.
Anyway, the reason for my rant regarding the local rag, is the letter page of this morning’s copy.
Normally the haunt of sofa prime ministers promoting their take on the way forward,
today there was this letter from Nigel, a manager at Southern Water.
I think you may be stretching it a bit with the “Positive Feedback” Nige
Something's afoot.
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