There is a big fuss going on locally at the moment. The farmer just down the hill from me – he of the potato lorries – has put in a planning application to build four huge “broiler sheds” to intensively rear chickens. The big problem is that this is slap bang in the middle of […]
I finally got my latest huge technical report finished earlier this week, and took a day’s leave today to unwind and relax. I decided to treat myself to lunch out at a new restaurant that has recently opened in Malvern – The Terrace on the Hill. By day it’s a cafe/brasserie serving light lunches, and […]
Christopher got a letter today from the NHS. I opened it with considerable annoyance – surely they should have known that he was dead, since he died under their jurisdiction! The letter said that his medical exemption certificate to give him free prescriptions was about to expire, and would he please renew it. Since he […]
Work has been extremely busy for the past month or more. I had a major meeting with my customer and suppliers, which needed a lot of preparation. Consequently, I’ve been working a lot of overtime and feeling rather stressed. So it was really good to spend Sunday at Eastnor pottery. I wasn’t throwing this time, […]
This afternoon I went to the matinee of the J.B. Priestley play Dangerous Corner at Malvern Theatres. It’s a murder mystery play, in which a chance remark at a dinner party reopens the apparently closed matter of the suicide of a family member the previous year. More and more skeletons come tumbling out of the […]
I blame my mother entirely. She phoned me up shortly after I’d had the bathroom finished, and told me to make sure I enjoyed the next half hour – as after that I’d have to start on the next round of maintaining and renovating the house! She clearly put a jinx on it, as I’ve […]
I’ve been having ongoing problems with noises in the attic all summer and autumn. Martin (the brother-in-law of Tim my original pest controller) has been back here multiple times to put poison down in the loft to try to get rid of the vermin. In the past that’s always worked, at least temporarily. But not […]
One of the weirder concepts that I came across working through the MOOC on Hadrian’s Wall is that of the “Fibula Event Horizon”. This is apparently a recognised archaeological term, referring to the sudden and dramatic increase of small brooches (fibulae) found in late iron-age contexts in Britain just before the Roman conquest. It is […]
So Rob finally finished the bathroom and the long list of household maintenance jobs I’d given him. I got home from work to find him packed up and waiting for me in his van on the drive. We went round the house inspecting and ticking off all the items. Sapling removed from roof? Check. Gutters […]
Rob the decorator has been making good progress with the bathroom. All the tiles are up and grouted, there’s fresh lining paper on the ceiling, and he’s made a start on painting the woodwork. However, he’s going to have plenty of time to fill in over the next two days, while he’s waiting for the […]
