The House Husband

Every month, the rangers post a list of activities on the park notice boards. This morning I spotted the new one for May. Under the heading ‘Mud’ they explained that the circus coincided with the wettest April on record resulting in muddy devastation.

The notice went on to report that extensive work would be carried out to return it to something that resembles what it looked like before, rather than the huge slurry pit it resembles at present. In order to achieve this, a temporary fence is going to be erected around the area as they work on it.

This is great but the best news is that the circus is going to pay for it. Well done, Gerry Cottle! Given it wasn’t really anyone’s fault, as such, it’s a lovely thing to do. Mind you, it, more or less, ensures they can come back next year, I assume.

Meanwhile back at the house I had to perform some essential maintenance on the blog. I hate going through the updates so I put them off as long as possible however, today I discovered that if I didn’t upgrade to the latest version, I’d lose some functionality from plugins I have loaded.

So I went through the trauma of backing up, deleting and reloading. It all went smoothly enough and now the entire administrative area looks entirely different. Still, my plugins all work and I can rest calmly knowing it’s the latest and the greatest it can be.

Not the greatest is our burn bin. It’s sprung a leak. Or rather, it has developed a whopping great hole in the side, spilling ashes everywhere.

Looking into hell

Looks like we’ll need a new one soon. Which is what I’ve been thinking about the home page of our site. So I made a big change. I quite like it.

It was almost sunny for the entire day today. What a difference a bit of blue sky makes. And the anticipated storms of 8pm were only a very slight drizzle.

In order to celebrate properly, I took to the garden and, firstly, mowed the lawn. To say it needed it would be as big and understatement as saying that Titanic ran into an ice cube.

The long grasses of the African savannah

Of course, the grass was pretty sodden so it kept chugging up the blades and stopping the engine but eventually I managed to make it all look a little more presentable. Of course the path makes an excellent mowing strip as well as somewhere to bounce the mower in order to rid it of clumps of grass.

Still lush but lots shorter...and I think I've lost Day-z

The bit behind me looks much better as well. Speaking of which, I also planted the standard rose we bought weeks ago. It’s been sitting down the side of the house, propped up by the big blue recycling bin. It’s a lovely yellow, scented, standard rose and we’re hoping for great things from it.

It’s a David Austin English fragrant rose called Graham Thomas so, from now on, will be called Graham. When it flowers (repeatedly, apparently) it should look like this:

Graham's label

The day was so beautiful that, of course, we also went for a walk in the park. I decided to treat the poodles because they’ve been stuck inside for a week and took them all the way around. We met lots of other people taking their grateful dogs on sun-laden jaunts, all happily wagging their tails and full of the joys of being let out after a month of rain.

All was gorgeous until we reached the football pitch near the golf course. Last week the circus was in town and they always pitch up there but usually the rain is kept to a minimum for the duration of their stay. Of course, this wasn’t the case last week. In fact, normally I get to see them gradually getting everything set up for the big event on the weekend but, apart from seeing the trucks at great distance from the path into town, I’d seen nowt of their visit.

I may have seen nowt of their arrival and set up but I certainly saw a lot of what they left. They have devastated the park!!!! Ghastly great ruts of churned up grass and mud. It looks like a battle field after a jolly good rampant shelling from the Panzer Division of the German army.

Where picnics once took place

Honestly, I felt like crying. Only a few short weeks ago, I watched families frolicking, playing bat and ball games, giggling in the sun, eating home made treats on the grass. Groups of teenagers for once smiling as they laid back absorbing much needed vitamin D. Hundreds of dogs chasing hundreds of tennis balls. Now, all that’s left, is a desolate wasteland of truck treads.

Sob, sob

And with more rain forecast, it’s going to take a while to get back to anything approaching usable. It makes me so sad.

Rather than end on such a miserable note, here’s a ladybird that was happily sitting on the lavatera, watching me mow earlier in the day.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Our garden is a quagmire. I noticed that even Day-z has started picking out the tiny islands of grass to walk on, afraid she’ll vanish in the bog. Of course, Carmen just charges through it, making it worse. I have made a few trips up the back but generally avoided it for fear of being sucked under.

Our mud garden

And so the day has been spent largely inside. I went shopping, of course, and had my coffee in Starbucks.

Actually I was in Starbucks, happily reading The Indian Mutiny – 1857 on my reader when a cheery voice beside me said “Oh, hello!” It was Alex, who used to work there but then worked in Cote. She is working on her final piece for uni and has, therefore, given up work. So she says. She graduates in July but her piece has to be in by May. She’s at the uni here so I’m assuming she’s doing something arty.

I asked her what she was going to do when she’s finished. She thought it over and then said, with utter confidence “Do a Masters.” She thought for a bit more then said “And another Masters. I can just keep doing lots of Masters.” I smiled, unsure if she was being serious. She’s Schumanian and maybe I didn’t get the joke intonation or something. However, I think she was serious.

This then made me wonder what sort of arty Masters you could do and what the dissertation would be about. Make a wedding dress, maybe. Or stuff a doona. Then I thought about Mirinda and her multitude Masters of Arts and figured I’d best stop thinking about it.

I made myself toad in the hole for dinner which, while I loved it, is also a major treat for the dogs. The minute I take the sausages out of the wrapper they are sitting in the kitchen watching and waiting. As they bubble and spit beneath the grill, the dogs sit and watch them, enthralled like kids watching Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs for the first time. When I take the snags out, they get all excited, thinking I’ll just pop them into their mouths like dolphins with fish. They then guard them – well, Day-z does, Carmen feigns a careless disregard by going into the lounge for a sleep – until they are cold enough for me to cut up and drop in their bowls. And they don’t waste any time tasting them! God no. They’re gone in seconds and then the dogs are back in the kitchen looking for the rest.

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed my dinner though possibly not as much as Mirinda did her Moroccan dinner in Bath today.

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I spotted this on blip today. It is from someone who lives and works in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was posted the day of the quake. I think it shows the power of blogging that we can get such a human perspective on events happening in the world these days. Broadcast news is always a distant, unattached view; this is a real person. I felt sad but also cheered by the human spirit. It’s well worth a read: New Zealand

Ever since we changed the clocks, the rain has hardly stopped. Mirinda and the puppies have spent the last two days inside. I went shopping but otherwise spent the day inside, studying.

And then, just before 7pm, Mirinda suggested we walk to the castle. The rain had stopped and she was going a bit stir crazy. Naturally I laughed. I mean, how could I possibly go before 7:15? I told her as much. She thinks I’m a bit obsessed about The Archers.

And so, at 7:15, we left the house. As we reached the Avenue of Trees, a sea of mud spread out before us. The poodles were a bit sceptical about walking across it. We managed to get through the first bit, reaching the relatively solid grass.

All was fine except for the chill wind, until the hail started. It was lashing us, almost horizontal with the wind. We struggled to walk into it, the puppies’ ears stretched out alongside their heads, forced backwards. Carmen wanted to turn and give us a querulous glance but she was frightened her head would come off.

We didn’t make it as far as the castle. Mirinda shouted something impossible to hear. She turned, so I assumed she had suggested we return home. As soon as we started walking, the weather improved. That was mostly because the wind was now blowing from behind us.

We safely arrived home and the lovely short coated puppies took very little time to dry.

“Well, she crossed her legs so there can’t be too much wrong” – two old ladies talking in Waitrose in the dairy aisle. I assume they were talking about someone’s plastic hip. Actually I found out the other day that Waitrose was named after two grocer-type chaps who joined together in 1908; a Mr Waite and a Mr Rose. Actually, there was also a Mr Taylor, but he left in 1906. It was then called Waite, Rose and Taylor, which doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. Had Mr Rose left, it may now be called Waitaylor. Or if Mr Waite had slipped off, it could be Rosetaylor, which is almost Rose Tyler, and we know what happened to her. I can’t imagine having to dimension hop for my groceries.

Having a rest from my presentation preparation this afternoon, I had a dig around the old family tree for about half an hour. I have been a tad remiss in keeping up with the ancestors, I must admit. I did find something interesting about the Buttericks. For some reason (a reason I may find out one day) three of the Butterick children were baptised on the same day at St Augustine’s church in Kilburn. This may not sound particularly odd, but bear in mind they weren’t the only children and one of them not baptised was, I think, a twin of one who was. Bloody confusing!

The rest of the afternoon was spent on my presentation, prettying it up, basically, and making sure my jokes are evenly spaced. Mirinda was doing a bit of work, so we both beavered away in adjacent rooms while the puppies occasionally wandered from one room to the other. There is also the occasional movement of documents between email accounts as Mirinda finishes drafts of things for me to proof read and give an opinion on.

We did take a break to wander up to the castle and back. Though, I should admit, we didn’t quite make it to the castle because of the deep mud we’d have had to plough through. The park, like our back garden, is not particularly pleasant this time of year. I think February in England – I think rain and mud. Naturally, while the sun has shone for large extents of the day, it drizzled with rain the whole way around, soaking the dogs.

Which reminds me, the odd hail storm we had last night and the fact that the temperature took a while to creep into positive figures this morning, made the path into town quite slippery this morning and I was fortunate that my muscles remembered the various flexing techniques learnt from a year spent ice skating in Homebush, or I would have found myself with a wet butt on a number of occasions.

This is an experiment. I have uploaded a video of the poodles to YouTube. You should be able to see it below. Please let me know if you can’t.

John Terry, allegedly, had an affair with the ex-girlfriend of Wayne Bridge, his Chelsea & England team mate. It made the front page of all the national UK papers today. And, apparently, having an extra-marital affair will hamper your ability to play football for your country. Also, there are things called super injunctions. So, if you want to keep things out of the media, you get an injunction. If you want to keep that injunction out of the media you get a super injunction. This means, you not only can’t talk about something but you can’t talk about the thing that has stopped you talking about it either.

I heard an interview on Football Focus. Three ex-footballers were asked about John Terry’s future as English captain since his affair has come to light. All three, very grave and concerned, were convinced that Capello (the England manager), known for being strict and moral, would strip him of his captain’s armband and demote him to…well, not being captain, I guess. Of course, all three spoke of it all in just emotive terms.

And then, following them, came the sports writer from the Financial Times. I much prefer his level-headed approach. Basically, he said, these are professionals. They are paid to play football and to win. When they are on the pitch, that’s what they do. They have to in order to justify their wages. Capello, too, is paid a lot of money to get England to, and maybe win, the World Cup this year. It is up to him to gauge how the team will be affected by the news story but really, Capello would have to think hard about removing one of the best players in the team.

And then Chelsea went to Burnley this afternoon and Terry showed his worth on the pitch. He scored the goal that won Chelsea the game.

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Anyway, today the sun was glorious hot, though the wind was frigidly cold. The two evened out somewhat to make a lovely day, full of blue skies. It seemed the perfect day to go to Frensham for a walk across the sandy hills and through the spiky gorse.

All was lovely and peaceful (I didn’t let the noisy trail bike riders upset me to much). The gorse that lines the path that follows the bronze age barrows on the top of the ridge has been bent over by the snow and is now growing across the path. This can be quite painful in shorts as gorse is covered in prickles, but when the temperature is just above freezing, this is not really an issue. We just brushed on through.

We passed a chap who said that ‘they’ had made a big path through the heather because of the snow. I couldn’t work out what he meant so I just nodded and smiled and said something inane so he’d think I had. He walked off smiling so I can only guess it worked. I’m pretty sure he didn’t tell me who ‘they’ were.

We have two options when we reach the top of the ridge. We can go straight back down and then around the pond or we can continue on, through the conifer woods then sweep down behind the pond. We hadn’t been round the back for ages so I voted for this. I was soon regretting it as we wound up sloshing through semi-frozen puddles of mud, half of which adhered to the puppies. Still, it was a lovely and long walk.

Mirinda & Puppies at Frensham

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Tonight we went to the Yvonne Arnaud theatre and saw the new Alan Ayckbourn play, My Wonderful Day. It’s been a while since we went to the theatre together (I went to the opera in November and Mirinda went to the ballet a couple of weeks ago) and we always try to get to Ayckbourn’s latest as it always tours to Guildford.

Well, as usual, it was excellent. Maybe I’ll give it a proper write up tomorrow. It’s late and I’m half watching Match of the Day.