General musings

Here we are. It's Saturday again. And I'm at Collegiate Crescent for the day. I'm wearing a pink, floaty skirt and an off white shirt. Don't usually wear skirts to work -- not exactly ideal attire if crawling around under book shelves! But I anticipate no crawling today, so a skirt it is (has nothing at all to do with the fact that all my trousers appear to have shrunk slightly, oh no no!)

The weather has been mostly glorious this week, in the low 30s and, most unusually for England, very low humidity. Gorgeous weather for lazing about in the garden (which we have been doing quite a bit of in the evenings; still lovely and long and light). There was one day when the temperature dropped a little and the humidity rose. I don't like very humid weather. Makes me coff! So, not pleasant but thankfully short lived. But no rain. Or at least, perhaps a dozen drops sometime early this morning, but that really doesn't count. Mind you, having said that, I've just looked outside and it's looking very black and heavy. I think a thunderstorm is on its way. Bummer. The Builder was going to go to the allotment this afternoon and pick a zillion more blackcurrants and the next row of peas. Looks like it might be a tomorrow activity!

Speaking of The Builder, thank you to all who have been thinking Gainful Employment thoughts for him. You can stop now! He left his phone in the car on Tuesday for a few hours. Went to collect it and found something like 32 missed calls on it, from people wanting to offer him work. He's now working for somebody in Rampton, about an hour away. Looks like it might last until October or so. Excellent. We eat again!

Actually, we've been eating quite well. Lots of lovely salads, baby potatoes, fresh herbs, light summer things. I even lit the barbecue last evening. The Builder had pointed out that we were having a spectacularly lovely summer and hadn't lit it at all, really (once, I think, before we moved). So I bought burgers and chicken fillets and thin, thin beef steaks and baking potatoes and sweet potatoes and two fabulous salad mixes and fired it up. I do hope it wasn't that that drove the people next door inside! I only use wood, never charcoal. And it wasn't a very smoke-y fire. It was a fine barbecue, if I do say so myself. Sweet potatoes, wrapped in silver foil, cook up beautifully in the coals. As do baking potatoes. They take very much longer, though.

Now that The Builder has gainful employment elsewhere, I've been bringing the car into work. I suppose I should be using public transport but it looks as though it's considerably cheaper to come in the car -- if you don't have to factor in parking charges. I've been leaving the car in the roads around The Mudhut and walking in from there. Which may explain why my trousers have shrunk ever so slightly. I'm back to walking around 11-12k steps each day. Since we moved to The Sidings, The Builder has been driving me in and dropping me at the door. I've only been averaging 5 or 6k steps. Makes a difference, obviously! I shall carry on doing this until they make parking in those streets residential parking only (a move that is apparently about to happen). Then I suppose I'll have to investigate the public transport option more thoroughly.

I wonder if that hedgehog is still about. I've been putting down mealworms in a bowl on the lawn, intending them for birds. They've been getting very crisp quite quickly and I haven't seen anything show any real interest in them. But each morning when I go out to replace them they've vanished overnight. Now, The Builder did see two blackbirds feasting on them (Toasted mealworms. Yum!) this morning when he went down to make the tea. But it's the first time either of us has seen avian life forms eating them. And yesterday there was something definitely a-rustling in the woodshed, um, sorry, woodpile (where we've stashed all the tree bodies) and at the bottom there's a small, hedgepiglet sized hole, with a spiderweb canopy. We have ten tiny, tiny goldfish as well. I picked them up on an impulse when I was wandering past the pet shop one afternoon during the week. So that gives us ten fish, five or more frogs, a possible hedgehog, a puppy-next-door and zillions of birds (I've seen a greenfinch and two bullfinches in the last few days, as well as all the other birdies that drop in).

Oh yes. I've had a letter from the Allotment Man in Tupton. The new allotment is definitely ours. Let the weed-slashing commence!

The thunderstorm has arrived!