THE JOURNAL

13 September Saturday

People often say that something Looks Well.   They don’t say that it Looks Good or even that it Looks Nice. It Looks Well is a real compliment.

14 September Sunday

The house is all painted.  It is looking good. We step outside often to look at it and to admire it. It took a bit of getting used to the colour.  I don’t know whether to call it dusty pink or raspberry ripple or what.  It looks different at different times of day.  It does look fine and the off-white surrounds on the windows look sharp.  Maybe it actually looks ridiculous and we are only thinking that we like it because we are getting used to it. What I am worrying about is what we are going to do with Em’s house.  We had to move it away from the wall before the work got started.  The roof, which has been falling in for quite a long time completely collapsed.  The floor fell apart as the house was moved.  We found a large cache old bones, remnants of rubber toys and clumped up filthy blankets.  The bones made me weep.  The walls have served as a gallery for a long time. Every photo of another dog and announcements about puppies to be viewed and dog shows were put up on the walls.  There were a few cat pictures on the left side but it was mostly dog things that got stapled up.  Now everything is peeled, faded or torn.  Em had not actually been using her house for a long time.  I think she could not go inside perhaps for fear that she would not even know how to get herself back out.  She was avoiding  places like that. She no longer wanted to sleep in her wicker bed and preferred her sheep’s wool mat to anything that held her in position. Since she never slept outside and only used it during the day, I thought of her house as an office.  Now the fact that we have moved it at all makes it seem crazy to move it back into its old position.  To take it down and throw it onto the burning pile seems so final.  It is all happening a bit faster than I would have liked.

15 September Monday

The postman was in a bit of a tizzy this morning.  He is one of several substitute postmen who have been driving down to us since John is still at home recovering from surgery. Today’s man said it was a terrible day for him as the new Tesco Club Cards were being sent out and that meant that nearly every house was getting a delivery.  He said that there are many houses which he only goes to once a week or not even that often but when the Tesco Club Cards get sent out the whole entire Post Office and all of the delivery men are just rushed off their feet.

16 September Tuesday

I walked out over Joe’s fields this morning.  I wanted to walk up the mass path, but there is no way to get through.  Branches and trees have fallen and there are masses of  brambles blocking the way. It will take some big work before we can walk that route again. The grass in the fields was heavy with dew and my trousers were wet up to the knee before I had gone any distance at all. I could see Joe on his tractor far ahead.  He was rounding up the cows for the slow walk to the milking.  Rather than straggle along behind them, I stayed on the fields and walked through one fenced off area after another.  I think there were eight fields to pass through.  I had to crawl underneath the wire.  It was a wet thing to do.  Walking is a dilemma in these early autumn days.  The ground is heavy with wet in the morning but once the sun burns off the wetness,  it becomes too hot for walking.  So I walked and crawled through the wet grass.  Going under the two kinds of fencing is always a bit of a challenge.  I hate to hit the wire and get an electric shock. There is a string which is used a lot on most of the fenced areas.  I think of it as a new kind of fencing but I think it has been around for a while.  It is not new. The string is white with either blue or yellow interspersed with the white.  I can never be sure if the string is electrified.  To a certain degree the cows get conditioned to understand that the string is on, but I think it is often not on.  They see it and avoid making contact because they have been shocked by it before.  Like the cows I choose not to make contact with it.  In a few of the fields there was evidence of recent grass eating. Since the cows had been eating away,  there was a lot of manure. in the remaining grass.  Each time I crawled or rolled under a fence I had to check where I was going in order to make sure I did not land in manure.  The fresh stuff is slippery and messy but the day old stuff has a crust over the top of it.  It means crunching through the older stuff and then landing in the wet and slimy stuff which has been kept wet by being protected.  None of it smells but it is messy. By the time I reached the gate and climbed over it onto the road, I was soaking wet.  I had avoided all of the manure, except for a bit on my boots.  I felt a real sense of accomplishment and it was still early morning.