Having parted company with the chap who managed the garden I am now in sole charge and I know that I shall make blundering errors and will just have to learn from my own mistakes. In fact, as a kind reader pointed out, I made one with my early radish planting, something I have started to correct today.
Natch, some folks, like Darren Atwater, leap to the conclusion that Joshua headed to school dressed as Harry Potter. Au contraire. He is, of course, a Welsh wizard who even as a boy performed miraculous feats. That is to say Myrddin ap Emrys or, as thee infidels over the river In England might say, Merlin. And, yes, that is a home made wand made by yours truly.
Since 2011, I have been urging Warwick School to do something about historic physical and, latterly, sexual abuse of young boys. Two headmasters of Britain’s third oldest school swept the matter under the carpet but, to his credit, the new headmaster, James Barker, himself an OW, has done something. Barker, myself and governor Ruth Weekes had a long Zoom chat today and Warwick says that it believes my allegations against Eve, apologises for what happened and for its 41 years of failure in doing something about it. That was welcome. But that is not enough for Warwick is sitting on far worse secrets.
The flood waters are now more or less static at c9 metres down at the bridge so that is high but not at record levels. Here at the Welsh Hovel the first three photos are from the garden. Inlast year’s record high floods the waters reached right up to the back doorstep. This time they are merely in the bottom reaches of the lawn but they stretch for miles.
Later on I have a few snaps of the River Dee at the Hovel itself but first a few from last night and this morning from the 1300s bridge about 1000 yards downstream over to the infidels in England. First a couple from yesterday looking downstream on the Welsh side.
When stetched out, cat Quincey is really very large indeed. Supplementing his diet with numerous mice, rats and birds he is a true fat cat as I showed you the other day HERE. And that makes his love of trying to get into very small boxes make him look all the more ridiculous as you can see below.
Last night, the remaining squashes stored from the Autumn went into a stew. Today at lunchtime we ate the last of the winter potatoes seasoned with almost the last of my dried herbs, some rather miniscule sprouts from the winter crop and a small cauliflower from the same vintage,all of which you can see below. The last of my stored apples were used to make an apple sauce for a joint of pork.
Okay we can argue the toss on how many deaths Stalin was responsible for. Some apologists say that in the years 1924 to 1939 it is ONLY 3.5 million. I suspect that the 20 million number is rather too high but whatever the actual number it surely puts him in a podium position in the all time genocidal dictators contest. Yes the part of the BBC responsible for educating our kids thinks there is another way of looking at Comrade Stalin,the bull case for Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili. That the BBC even asks the question below is yet another reason why so many of us find paying our license such an appalling idea.
Nobody gives a fuck about the problems working parents face when school is shut. Half term for my son Joshua was already going to be extended by the teachers having one of their seven INSET days, a week on Monday. Now it is extended at this end as, yesterday, Wrexham ordained that all schools here will be teaching online today.
Rescue cat Quincey is not deterred by the storm that has sent the bedwetters at Wrexham Council into wild panic and has just ventured out for a mouse hunt. He knows that a rising river Dee may flush lunch out of its holes. But still, after such labours he needs a good rest and this was him “in action” last night on a King William sofa from my late father’s house, now lovingly restored. Only the best for Quincey.
According to the BBC and the rest of the liberal intellegentsia the only thing stopping the NHS from being even more amazing – don’t mention record waiting lists, etc, etc – is lack of cash. But for key hires such as £100,000 a year diversity directors there are always funds. And it seems that it is not just diversity, as opposed to curing sick folk, that is a priority. Enjoy the most recent hires being advertised.
Back with Joshua from school I prepared to finish off a long piece on how our Government lies to us via a pliant press. At that point I started to hear a large helicopter hovering overhead. For a minute I thought the cops had taken a lesson from that fascist Trudeau and were coming for me. But no it was a Police helicopter and living here by the river Dee, sadly, I knew what it meant.
There were some who suggested that planting raidishes on the last day of January was doomed to failure. I suggest an apology is in order as the photo below demonstrates. The next line of radishes goes in in two weeks time along with a couple of other early vegetables. Meanwhile I still have some winter sprouts, a cauliflower and a bit of cabbage to harvest. It is a non stop production line here.
This gem below is from a debate at the Oxford Union late last year. It is so of the age. I suggest that the speaker is the ideal candidate to become the new Comissioner of the Metropolitan Police, replacing Cressida Dick who, apparently, is not woke enough. It is that which got her “resigned” not years of being utterly useless.
In one sense Tory MP Maria Caulfield is right. Anyone can get HIV but in encouraging us all to head off to the NHS, the envy of the world, with its record waiting lists to get a test is Ms Caulfield really being totally fair and balanced? Or just adding to the NHS waiting lists in order to appease certain vociferous minorities?
