I’ve put the possible party dates on the header now, not that there’s any hurry to fix a date.  I’ll see if any of my family can be there – I think that Ro and Dora have been to every one and the others come when they can.  The year before last, little Rufus was only a few weeks old and this time it’ll be days or weeks after his second birthday.

LT is back here again, having spent much of his time at his own place installing a new front door lock.  We’ve spoken on the phone each day and there’s been some Facebook communication too, as well as blogging.  I’ve been rather more remiss in that respect though – I meant to blog last night but the internet speed was even more dismal than usual.  I thought of watching some television and that never means tv any more: it’s not that there’s *nothing* on, but that there’s never anything at the particular time that I feel like watching it.  So I tried iPlayer and Netflix but nothing would load.  So I gave up and went to bed and read.

I suspect the reason for the extreme work-to-rule slowness of it was the weather.  Unusually, Norfolk and Suffolk seem to have had the worst of it this time.  LT said that it was extremely windy in Reading (though there is debate over whether the escaped wolf got out because its fence blew open or whether someone opened the gate: all the same, it strolled through a field of sheep and left them unscathed, so it is rather the lupine equivalent of Ferdinand the Bull, it seems) but here, a lot of roads were closed because of fallen trees.  Yagnub wasn’t actually cut off, but you couldn’t get to Norwich nor various other towns without going a very circuitous route.  Trains didn’t run and electricity was off.  Here was rather less dramatic, it just kept me awake.  Yesterday morning, I discovered that several panes of glass had blown out (one of them in) of the greenhouse and the wild plum tree by the lawn had some cracked branches, one having fallen on another and a domino effect having happened.  Little enough damage and nothing to fuss about.  Fortunately, Wince the gardener was due that day and, as I had a haircut appointment at 9.15, he did the clearing up and cut back the damaged branches.  I have a boxful of glass in the greenhouse.  I should take it to the tip but that’s a 20 minute drive away, in a direction I never go ordinarily.  They closed the local free tip a few years ago.

At least it’s too early to have wanted to sow seeds.  I have plenty of greenhouse glass, but it’s the size for the other greenhouse and I doubt I have enough for the damaged one.  Cutting old glass is possible but not easy, it becomes more brittle with age.  We’ll measure up and see what we have. but we may well have to go and buy what we need.  At least the chickens’ greenhouse was unscathed.