Pond safety

This is our pond.

I wish it looked like this.

But it looks like this:

exposed black liner,

and duck weed.

However Tall Cat drew my attention to

something of interest afoot

in the pond this morning.

The frogs are back,

so once again we have left it too late to repair the leaks,

or fill it in altogether.

With a visiting grand-daughter,

who will be crawling before we know it,

filling it in is the safest option.

We'll concentrate our efforts on the bird feeders instead.

To the drier side of Britain

Big Bear was left out on the washing line

last night.

This was an unfortunate oversight

as it was raining quite heavily at 6 a.m.

He is sitting on a beach towel on the boiler now.

He hasn't said much.

But the poster seems to have caught his attention.

It has given him an idea.

A Note to Readers

Lucille has been advised by Specialists
that she has been overdoing things.
A rest cure has been recommended for her too.
She protested that people would miss her
useful or beautiful outpourings and that she must soldier on.
They told her that she was losing her grip 
(which she thought was pretty rude) and that bizarre 'recipes',
whimsical stories and dressed up bears 
were concrete evidence of this.

The new library

 The brief was to brighten up 

a children's school library ceiling 

as part of a major reorganisation and refurbishment.

Twenty feet of sloping ceiling

with irregularly spaced lights, to decorate.

There was already a fantastic jungle mural on the wall

so it had to complement that -

using materials readily to hand in the art cupboard.

It was the Grand Opening today.

The VIPs attended, the sun shone,

speeches were made

 and a ribbon was cut.

Well done O.

Mission accomplished.

No show garden

I've dug the beds and spread the compost,

I even sorted my seeds,

but then a curious apathy set in and apart from

photographing the Victoria plum

which is doing very well without any help from me,

I have done nothing.

By now I should be busy filling pots, trays, root trainers

 and gutters with seeds.

Maybe tomorrow will be the day.

But I'm not very hopeful.

I see the foxes have gone to ground.

Maybe it is the prospect of half a dozen little cubs 

making merry in the vegetable plot

that is putting me off.

Life in an English Village

As we contemplate a change of lifestyle and abode, I looked to my latest King Penguin,

Life in an English Village by Noel Carrington and Edward Bawden 

for an indication of what we might be letting ourselves in for.

Townsmen who retire to the village have not found it easy to reintegrate themselves into the life of the community. Between them and the villagers proper there has been too big a gap in the way of wealth and habit of mind. 

You can live in a village for ten, twenty, or thirty years, and still you do not belong.

You can be a regular at the local, and talk your head off but you still will not be a villager.

But if we persist in this notion that there is a better life to live as promised in the pages of Country Living, what should we look for?

It is a great blessing to have not only a good general store

but a baker who will also put your joint in the oven, 

as is the custom in several villages I have known,

a cobbler who can make your straps as well as mend your shoes,

A fair-sized village can have a better school, with several classes for children of different ages. The new practice of sending children by car from one village to another cannot be very economic or sound.

But then just as you were being seduced Cobbett weighs in:

Country people know everything. 

If you have ever made a faux pas, of any sort or description; 

if you have anything about you, 

of which you do not want all the world to know, 

never retire to a village, keep in some great town.

And still further scorn is poured on the townies' attempts to blend in:

In some of the most favoured counties, such as Surrey and Sussex, almost every village has been repeopled to some extent in this way; there being villages where every dwelling more than fifty years old has been bought up and 'improved'. The brass door knocker, the cretonnes and the garden ornaments tell you in a moment where 'residents' have replaced the native. The newcomers have developed a country cottage style of furnishing which has been bred by the magazines of taste. It is a very dim descendant of Petit Trianon rustic, and is the nearest thing to contemporary style.

Reluctantly at the end of his introduction Noel Carrington concedes that:

There are many good qualities in village life of which I have not said enough, and they are qualities which will endure. 

Villagers are ...less given to fretting and grumbling than their cousins in town.

There are not the strained eyes in the village faces - the look that speaks of too many things attempted in too little time, of the daily struggle to and from work and the frustration of utterly uncongenial tasks.

So as we drove back to the metropolis, what was our conclusion?

There are lovely parks to visit,

trees,

 wildlife very near at hand

and a picturesque chapel

where I can sit in the back pew

and let Matins, Eucharist and Evensong wash over me,

much as it would in any country church.

Then if I am still dissatisfied, 

I can gaze upon this poster and reflect that

 a wicker hamper is heavy and unwieldy if carried much further than

 the end of the garden. 

Leaks

There's a very worrying one in the shower which no amount of sealant has cured,

so the whole thing is going to have to be ripped out,

and another one in the pond liner which seems to have got worse since the thaw

so that will have to be drained and re-lined if it is to have any chance of turning into

 the model habitat illustrated in this early Child Education poster.

At present both pond and shower spectacularly fail the U or B test.

If you've got the blues...

...add a little orange.

It's complementary you know.