Mixed

The weather was fairly mixed today. Not warm, not cold, but mainly dry with sunny intervals. There was a short sharp dose of heavy rain as I drove south from Leeds. I had read that Moulsford had 9mm of rain yesterday so I was hoping that kept my plants ticking over.

I did not sleep particularly well so I was glad when morning arrived and I could slope out for my walk round the car park with Heidi.

Breakfast was a quiet and calm affair with dog sausages for Heidi. The hotel was a delight in which to stay. The receptionists were dog lovers and the chap in charge of brekkie always brought her a sausage.

I don’t know if they were short of staff over the bank holiday but they declared, via notices, that they had no vacancies on Friday and Sunday. ( They had plenty) But Saturday was genuinely full.

I set off for home, after giving H a walk up at Farnley Park – a large recreational space with woodland walks and open grassland. Lots of dogs were running around. Very pleasant.

The journey south was much more straightforward than Friday’s journey north. The weather was better, there was less traffic and fewer lorries. I stopped a couple of times, once because I felt tired, the other to use a loo.

I reached home around 15.30, and unloaded the car and watered my plants. ( There clearly had not been the 9mm of rain on Sunday.) I even relaxed before going to meet Ali and Fleur at Goring station. They had travelled down from Leeds by train. George and Dave will follow on in a couple of days.

It was, for once, a pleasure to check out the garden. I’m glad I cut the grass before my break.

The rest of the afternoon drifted on. There was a noticeable absence of any appealing television so I watched Keith Bryhmer Jones and his lady friend / partner / wife, Marj, not getting on very quickly with the job converting a very large Welsh chapel in Pwllheli into a home.

It seemed to be taking them interminable time to not do anything . And there is an awful lot to do. By the end of the episode I watched, they had paid someone to sandblast all the iron pillars and the range. A fantastic job.

And they had bought themselves a blue shipping container, painted it black with a yellow door, and installed a fancy, ornate French bed and a tin bath. Despite the fact there was no water. They planned to sleep in it to avoid the costs of overnight stays in B and Bs. This did not really advance the Chapel project. It was in the style of Detek Jarman at Dungeness.

If you can imagine a shipping container in this style…

Getting there…

Then I started to watch Despatches from Gaza – the Kill Zone. It is utterly horrendous what is going on there… a whole country bombed to oblivion.

Locally, in Moulsford, a few Lib Dem posters have sprung up during my absence. Is this a campaign to oust the Tory? May be one of the bluest places in the U.K.

Thought for The Day