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Taking advantage

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  Our lane has been closed again. You might think this was good news as the surface may be renewed, but no, it is about services to a house. The one good thing though is that we all took advantage of the reduced traffic. It was now only used by the locals and so we were able to walk and ride bikes without much trouble. There were whole fleets of cyclers whizzing into the freedom. They appeared out of nowhere and it made me wonder if there is web site that tells you of roads that are closed for main traffic in the countryside so that walkers or cyclists can hurry along and take advantage of the sudden silence. I know of a bird that does this. It is the redwing from Iceland and Eastern Europe often travelling in flocks across the great North Sea. Taking advantage of the early morning darkness, they surreptitiously swooped into our orchard, where this year most of our apples for some strange reason have dropped early. This is an unbelievable chance for redwings to sneak in when other
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Rubbish

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  I have had an email from Shropshire Council. ‘You will need to book a slot if you want to take waste and recycling to one of our centres’. It goes on to say that I will have to supply ID and my car number plate. I must ring up or fill in a form online before I arrive. All this is to make sure we do not have to wait in a queue, but we just turned up last week and there was hardly anyone there. The staff were helpful and we soon finished. Mind you it will stop out of county people coming and reduce trade waste, they say. So, we will have to make an appointment to get rid of rubbish from now on. What a procedure it will be, almost like getting a doctor’s appointment.   All this is a far cry from how we got rid of our rubbish when I was young and living on the farm. Of course, there was little waste, as we grew all our own fruit and vegetables and had our own meat. But eventually we bought tins of golden syrup and jars of marmite.   There was no wrapping paper and so we had no bin.
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Moving into autumn

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‘Come and join us after your Saturday shopping. Our autumn concert is at the civilised hour of 3.30pm.’ That is a good idea, I thought, because although I would not be shopping on Saturday, mid-afternoon is a good time for a concert for me. All too often shows are late evening and these days of darker nights I do not want to turn out on a cold evening, so I give it a miss. Luckily, we arrived near the door just in time but there was a long queue and we shuffled along, hoping to get out of the wind. But once at the pay desk our luck ran out. Payment was by cash only. I usually pay with my mobile and neither of us had cash. We were not alone and Mr T joined several others making a dash for the town’s cashpoints. These days you usually advertise ‘cash only’. I have seen some shops do it, but not so long ago cash was the usual way to pay. Now cards and mobiles have taken over. And the mobile is not just used for paying, I noticed one or two people reading their screens when the choir
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The Man in a Van

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  He was suddenly there at the end of our country lane. As I was driving onto the main road, I noticed his wooden caravan pulled onto the grass verge almost under the trees. It is a wide verge and he did not have to worry about yellow lines like the Lady in the Van because he was well away from the traffic. On my journey home I noticed his car also pulled onto the verge. Gradually things began to develop. Several rustic poles were hammered into the ground and then plinths appeared on the top. On these plinths he positioned carved wooden animals. They were almost life sized. There were owls, rabbits and what looked like weasels, but it was hard to tell as I drove past. Sometimes I saw him at work carving animals out of the wooden logs stored near his caravan. At our junction there is a little pull-in, and I often saw cars parked there and the occupants going to have a look, and perhaps buy his carved country-side creatures. Eventually a notice went up saying that he could take card
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Unexpected consequences

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      ‘Preparing for a power cut’ that is the title of the leaflet that has just come in through our letter box. I know we must think about these things, but it is surely a bit early. Mind you it is quite useful in that it tells you to call 105 in case of a power cut and the web page powercut105.com will tell us if our area is affected in a national emergency. All this supposes that you have a mobile phone and it is charged up. In 1972 there were planned blackouts and I remember electricity in 1974 electricity was rationed because of the miners’ strike and an oil crisis. There was a three-day working week in this emergency. We had no mobile phones, but our landlines worked because they did not rely on electricity as they do now. We lived on the side of a hill and I can remember watching the town down in the valley, when one half of the people lost their lights as their power was cut and the other half were suddenly lit up as it was their turn to have electricity. Our hedges have
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Dangers old and new

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“Her mother did not come and collect her.” I was at a stall selling the books I have written at a makers’ market. A person was going to buy a book for her mother. She chose a book about a mother and daughter relationship. She explained that her mother had been an evacuee in the war time and as a little girl she had been sent to live with a family in the countryside for safety. Her hometown was being bombed and she was in danger there. But when the war ended no one came to collect the daughter. I did not hear the rest of the story or why the little girl was abandoned but even after nearly eighty years she hasn’t forgotten the hurt. No one could forget, could they? We had an evacuee staying with my family in the second World War before I was born. She was from Hull where there was a lot of bombing because of the docks. But her mother came to take her home because, as it turned out, our house was just as dangerous. You see, although we lived in the countryside, we had a BBC transmit
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Even though you can't see it

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  Just because you cannot see it, it doesn’t mean it is not there. I met my friend in the street and he was wearing a lanyard. The lanyard was covered with sunflowers, startling yellow on a bright green background. I admired it. “II like your sunflower lanyard, what is it for?” I asked. “Oh, it’s to show I have a hidden disability,” he said. He has the beginnings of dementia and you cannot tell as he walks down the street. I will look out for the sunflowers because things are not always what they seem. There are lots of hidden illnesses and perhaps the person I saw parking in a space for the disabled and walking away had a disability we could not see. I wonder if he was wearing the sunflower lanyard. The road was very busy and it is a good job my friend was with a group of people as he could not have crossed the road safely. The traffic in town is non-stop and seems to be increasing. I remember when I was a young girl one of our games was to go to our lane end and write down ca
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