LT is home again, after a few days at his place in Reading. We’d planned to go together but, of course, that changed when Perdita put in an early appearance. I shopped for lunchtime food and went and spent the day cuddling her on Monday – on Tuesday, Ro took Rufus to nursery and then went back to bed with wife and baby. Nighttime feeds are fine. Child on the go all day is fine. The combination is pretty tiring.
It all caught up with me yesterday and I started panic-cooking. That is nothing to do with needing food but with needing to do something practical. But all this surplus energy gave me a lovely Indian-style meal last night, which was added to this evening … and the leftovers will probably feed us tomorrow as well, unless we can’t face them and put them in the freezer (or give some of them to the chickens) instead.
Plans to have a new fence down the drive are going ahead and I hope we’ll have a starting date quite soon. I’ve had friendly conversations with the farmer whose bullocks broke in – they’re no trouble when they stay there but they’ve damaged the wire so much that they can get onto the drive any time they want. When someone appears, they jump back, which does more damage. Yesterday, I told him that I simply can’t repair the fence any more. It looks all right but they can knock it over any time they choose. He’s tried to put them back on his own field many times but one of the four is a wild boy and runs back before going over the bridge. Today was the ultimatum and somehow this got through to the bullock and he allowed himself to be *steer-ed* across ( a dreadful play on words, sorry). So now we can go ahead, whenever the fence guy can fit us in.
After letting the chickens out this morning, I stood chatting to Boy, Rose’s son, for a few minutes. For the first time this year, we could bask in the warmth of the sun. That is, the sun has shone on other occasions but we couldn’t really feel it. I left the porch door shut but the side door open, so that the house was warmed by the sunshine. This evening there was a fabulous pink and blue sunset, though the temperature had dropped markedly. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a light overnight frost, but still no sign of real winter weather. The birds are singing as if it’s spring already.